MRNRD may not cut water allocations

CURTIS, Nebraska -- Water allocations for 2014 for Middle Republican Natural Resources District ground water irrigators may not be tighter than last year.

Board member John Palic said during the MRNRD monthly meeting Dec. 10 in Curtis, "We won't know if they're looser until our January meeting."

MRNRD manager Dan Smith said he recommends that the MRNRD "do nothing, and let the system roll back to normal operations." Board member Benjie Loomis also suggested "letting things go for year."

The MRNRDs normal allocation is 12 inches per year (60 inches over five years), and irrigators can carry over up to one year's allocation.

Last year's "hard cap" was 18 percent of the producer's available supply and ranged from 10.8 inches to 12.96 inches, depending on how much carryover the producer had accumulated, and treated all pump irrigators equally. The carryover does not go away, but its use was limited.

During a public forum segment of the meeting Dec. 10, Mike Aylward of Dickens said he tried different practices -- cutting corn population ... using hybrids that don't require as much water -- to farm within the hard-cap restriction for ground water irrigators last year. "I still had a crop failure," he told board members. "A hundred-forty bushels is a crop failure." He asked, "How can I pay the occupation tax without the ability to grow a crop?"

Amanda Johnson of Hayes Center said that yields were definitely affected by water restrictions last year. "The loss of gross income hurts," she said, citing not only personal losses for irrigators, but revenue losses to school districts as well.

Jane Widener of Wallace told board members that Nebraska "has gone above and beyond" to conserve water, and suggested that the state and the NRDs put pressure on Kansas and Colorado to regulate their own water usage. "Put the pressure on them," she said. "Not on us farmers trying to make a living."

A water committee of MRNRD board members will meet to study the allocation issue and the potential positive affects of augmentation projects before the regular board meeting Tuesday Jan. 14. Committee members are Bill Cappel, James Uerling, John Palic, Benjie Loomis and Brad Randel.

The Nebraska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) predicts that 2014 will be a dry year and will mostly likely declare it a "compact call year," based on a forecast of a lack of surface water available for delivery to Kansas from the Republican River Basin in 2014.

The DNR made the same compact call declaration for 2013. The declaration means that some curtailment of surface and ground water use will be needed to ensure that Nebraska complies with the 1943 Republican River Compact, which divvies up the river's water supply among Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas.

A compact call year means:

* For surface water irrigators, any water (up to the predicted shortage) that comes into storage reservoirs after Jan. 1, 2014, must be passed on through to Kansas.

* Ground water irrigators will be required to offset overuse that results in streamflow depletions in 2013 and 2014. It is anticipated that the river basin's two-year streamflow depletion will reach 43,340-acre feet.

An overuse can be addressed with retired acres, surface water leases and/or the shutdown of wells in the basin's rapid response areas. It can also be offset with water pumped in augmentation projects, such as the Rock Creek augmentation project in the Upper Republican NRD and the Lincoln County Farm augmentation project in the Middle Republican NRD.

Rock Creek started pumping water into the Republican River in late February 2013. The project generates about 14,000 acre-feet.

The Lincoln County Farm project -- whose pipeline to the Republican River is still under construction and 30 wells are expected to be pumping by April 2014 -- is expected to generate about 27,000 acre-feet in 2014. When it's fully operational, the farm project will have a capacity of producing up to 60,000 acre-feet, to be shared by three Republican River Basin NRDs and one Platte River NRD. Smith explained that this augmentation water replaces the surface water that was passed through the system because of the compact call year designation.

The total of 41,000 acre-feet expected to be generated next year by Rock Creek and the Lincoln County Farm would almost cover the 43,340 acre-feet of streamflow depletions that Nebraska must offset for 2013-2014.

If streamflow depletions assigned to the Middle Republican NRD are zeroed out with credit for the loss of surface water that has been retired or curtailed (by the State of Nebraska) within the MRNRD, there would be no need to reduce ground water allocations, according to board member Bill Hoyt.

James Uerling said, "It's a pretty simple concept: We (the MRNRD) suffered the losses (of surface water). We should get the credit for them."

Hoyt's successful motion, with Uerling's second, was to pursue the concept of retaining any credit or beneficial consumptive use to the local area (NRD) in which the curtailment of use occurred.

Smith said this concept needs to be evaluated through Nebraska's compact accounting procedures to determine if any adverse impacts are associated with this proposal. Moving this credit to the NRD's may have an adverse impact on surface water users.

Hoyt will take the MRNRD's support of the concept to the Nebraska Republican River Management Districts Association (RRMDA).

The reduction of use of surface appropriations and/or rapid response wells currently apply as a benefit/credit to the Natural Resource Districts without regard to the communities, counties or NRD where the curtailment occurred.