Missing springs

Dear Editor,

I am certainly glad that Steve Smith's letter in September 14 paper was under the bold heading of "Opinion." Because, I for one, do not believe that you can suck water out of an aquifer indiscriminately and put the blame for decreased stream flows on just those within two miles and not on the shoulders of all irrigators in the aquifer.

All he has to do is take a look out his back door and see what has happened to the Frenchman River above Enders Reservoir in the last 40 years.

Where did "normal" stream flow come from?  It was not usually from runoff from the surrounding lands, it was from a series of natural springs the length of the river. You used to be able to find springs and spring fed ponds all over the area.  Where are they now? Most are gone, or severely depleted because of the drop of the water levels of the aquifer that fed them. Granted, there was runoff at times, last spring's record rains prove that, but that was the exception not the general rule.

The Republican River above Swanson Reservoir is suffering from the same fate.  The normal flow was not run off, but water from spring fed creeks such as Buffalo Creek near Haigler, Rock Creek at Parks and Indian Creek near Max. A prime example is Rock Creek. When the hatchery was built the main spring that provided the water flowed at about 4,000 gallons per minute.  Now it is lucky to flow at 1,000 to 1,200 gallons per minute.  The springs above it are now virtually dry. There is very little tree growth above the hatchery, so where did the water go? Again, the Republican has flooded at times because of excessive rain, but the normal every day flow was from the springs.

I would challenge you to take a large stock tank and fill it with gravel then add enough water to bring the level to the top of the gravel.  Go to one side and insert a piece of medical tubing and take a little pump and over a period of time pump out 100 gallons and see what happens to the water level in all areas of the tank.

Computers are great aids to all of us, but the results we get from their calculations are only as good as the data that we put in. In a college course of business statistics the professor made sure that we all understood one thing and I quote "Statistics are normally designed to support the statistician."  Another example along that line was a farmer I know that spent big bucks on a Harvestor the selling point was that you could take all of the old waste roughage, grind it up, put it in the Harvestor and get wonderful high quality feed out. His explanation to me was "garbage in garbage out."  The computer model is a wonderful aid, but it is only as good as the data that created it and I don't think we even begin to know what all of the data is and variables are.

I do agree that conservation, and tree growth along the rivers have an effect, but I feel that the lion's share of the blame goes to all of those neat crop circles you see when you fly over Western Nebraska and Eastern Colorado.

I also believe that our water is extremely important to our state, and especially the Western half. So maybe it is time to stop the finger pointing and get serious about protecting it. We should not let greed, mismanagement or complacency destroy the goose that is laying our golden egg.

Paul J. Forch

Trenton