Is South Platte crisis a taste of things to come?

The District 44 legislative race is still up in the air, with canvassing boards busy counting votes to determine which two candidates will advance to the November election. Frank Shoemaker and Jeff Tidyman are on the bubble with Shoemaker leading by half a dozen votes on the way to an expected automatic recount.

Mark Christensen is leading by a slightly more comfortable lead, about 240 votes, but he and whomever he faces in the general election will have to deal with one major issue: water.

Christensen campaigned heavily on the topic, recalling how much better things were when the lakes were full.

Christensen is one of the founders of WaterClaim, an irrigation advocacy group, which is now pointing to Colorado as an example of what can happen if something major isn't done, and soon, such as transferring water from the Platte Basin.

The State of Colorado ordered 400 large irrigation wells shut down this week to keep water in the South Platte River, threatening 200 farms from Brighton to Fort Morgan, according to the Rocky Mountain News.

Farmers and bankers know what a disaster that could mean this time of the year, when thousands of dollars have been invested in seed and fertilizer already in the ground.

The state ordered the shutdown in response to a 2002 law meant to keep water in the South Platte, and which has already shut down more than 1,500 wells of the 5,000 operating in the basin and forced hundreds of other farms to purchase or find other sources of water to keep their wells operating legally.

And it isn't just farmers who are feeling the effects of the shortage. The Rocky Mountain News article sites the shutdown of two wells at a trailer park north of Brighton that will leave 70 families without water.

The Colorado state engineer who ordered the shutdown isn't unsympathetic to the farmers' plight, saying "It's the toughest decision I've ever had to make." But the official, Hal Simpson, said there simply wasn't enough water in the farmers' plans for them to return the required amount of water to the river.

With no sign of a major break in the drought, the problem only promises to work its way down the tributaries to the Missouri River.

Good luck to the three candidates who want to represent the 44th District in the next Nebraska Legislature. Whomever he is, he will represent the next ground zero in the war over water rights.

For a taste of what is happening to our neighbors to the west, the article is available online at:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4687154,00.ht...