High court rejects appeal

Monday, March 13, 2017

LINCOLN, Neb. — On Friday, the Nebraska Supreme Court sided with a Furnas County District Court ruling that dismissed a case filed by Frenchman Cambridge Irrigation District water users who claimed that water taken from them to help Nebraska comply with the 1943 Republican River Compact deprived them of economic benefits of their irrigated land.

FCID water users also filed suit against the state and the Department of Natural Resources claiming that their water rights were superior to the Compact.

The state’s high court ruled Friday that as federal law, the Compact allocations are the supreme law in the state, and that the DNR must ensure that the state remains in compliance with Republican River water allocations divvied up between Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas.

The high court’s ruling goes on to say that the state’s administration of surface water for Compact compliance did not deprive water users of economically beneficial use of their property, citing that data showed there was still crop production on their lands in 2013 and 2014 and that the farmland has not been converted to permanent dryland status.

The high court ruled that there was no sign that the DNR acted arbitrarily, capriciously or unreasonably.

Dave Domina, the attorney representing the FCID, called the latest decision “egregious,” that it negates water rights going back to 1895.

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