Latest water agreements step in right direction

The dispute is far from over, but common sense seems to have prevailed in the most recent activity concerning the Republican River.

Colorado and Nebraska entities have responded to downstream demands for water by converting groundwater into surface water, through augmentation projects Colorado's North Fork Republican River project, Rock Creek by the Upper Republican Natural Resources District and N-CORPE the Middle, Upper, Twin Platte and Lower NRDs.

The problem was, Nebraska would have been given only 53 percent credit for the N-CORPE project and 69 percent for the Rock Creek project.

That would force Nebraska to release an additional 30,000 acre-feet of water from Harlan County Lake to the Republican River by the end of the year to comply with the Republican River Compact.

The problem with THAT scenario is that Kansas doesn't need any irrigation water this time of the year, and doesn't have anywhere to store the water that would be released, so the valuable water would be sent on to the Gulf of Mexico.

Agreements signed last week give Nebraska and Colorado 100 percent credit for the augmentation projects, and more importantly, allows Nebraska to store water in Harlan County Reservoir until next spring, when Kansas can actually use it.

The Republican River Compact was signed into law by FDR on May 26, 1943, but after years of declining river flows, Kansas took Nebraska to court saying it was not receiving its fair share of water from the river.

An agreement was reached, but Kansas sued again, saying Nebraska was not complying with that agreement.

The case has finally made its way back to the U.S. Supreme Court, but that decision isn't expected until next year.

There's no guarantee the high court's decision will end the dispute, and there are likely to continue to be disputes between ground water and surface water irrigators.

But wasting water by sending it downstream with no chance of it being used for irrigation makes no sense.

The latest agreements are a step in the right direction, which is fair and equitable allocation of a limited water resource by all users, regardless of where they live.