WRANGLING FOR WATER
As drought lessens the amount of available water, many fight over claims to resources.
OLGA PIERCE
Water rights on the Platte River used to be as straightforward as the main streets of towns that depended on the river. Whoever owned the land could use the water beneath it. Seniority rights governed those who drew water from the river.
Now the boundaries of those rights have come together, overlapping in the vastness of the plains.
Nebraska has reached a turning point. There is not enough river for all possible purposes, and now difficult decisions must be made about what fraction of the available water will go to each competing claim.
Irrigating farmers compete with hunting and fishing outfitters, conservationists, power plants and thirsty cities for a dwindling resource. Advocates, courts, lawmakers, farmers and planners are now part of a discussion about the future of this natural resource. That debate will inevitably involve placing a price on the water.
The way to measure the value of a resource is to determine the value of each possible use, said David Bjornstad, an economist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. He specializes in putting price tags on natural resources.
"When you look at a natural resource like a river, its value is really equal to people's willingness to pay for its alternative uses," Bjornstad said.
Rivers have traditionally been used to provide drinking water, to generate electricity and to irrigate crops.
"Increasingly, we're recognizing the value of rivers for their aesthetic features and their contribution to people's recreational experiences," Bjornstad said.
But which use in Nebraska is the most valuable?
In 2002, the 26 counties that border or straddle the Platte sold $3.7 billion worth of crops, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 2002 census. That's 38 percent of the value of Nebraska's total crop production in that year.
For farmers in the Platte River basin, water is the difference between producing a crop or not, said Dennis Strauch, general manager of the Pathfinder Irrigation District in western Nebraska.
"We get 14-and-a-half inches of precipitation a year. Most crops need 22 inches of water," Strauch said. "Without irrigation, we couldn't have production - we wouldn't have crops."
In 1926, landowners in the district struck a deal with the federal government to purchase five dams and reservoirs, three supply canals and 550 miles of lateral canals connecting the system to farms in Sioux, Scottsbluff and Morrill counties. Each year until 1983, the landowners paid one-seventieth of the project cost - about $70 per acre. Now the landowners own the irrigation system and pay about $23 per acre for operating costs and maintenance. The federal government still operates the dams.
When the river is healthy, so is the farming economy. But in drought years, the lifeblood of the region dries up with the river.
The 2001 season was the last year the Pathfinder District was able to deliver 100 percent of its irrigation-water commitments. For much of the time since then, farmers have received only 50 or 60 percent of the expected amount of water. The decline has hurt.
Irrigated land in the area is worth about $1,500 per acre. Without water, land value plummets to $200 to $250 per acre.
With the drought, farmers were forced to idle their crop ground, some planting as little as half of their land. Crop insurance companies struck deals to pay landowners not to farm.
"Otherwise, people probably would've gone broke," Strauch said.
In 2005, increased snow in Colorado enabled the district to deliver 75 percent of its obligations. Combined with water conservation measures, such as starting and ending water delivery early, this increase enabled most farmers in the region to plant all of their land.
But district members remain at the mercy of a river with an uncertain future.
Scott Woodman owns and operates a 1,000-acre corn and soybean farm near Shelton, in central Nebraska. He has escaped such hardships so far because he uses groundwater to irrigate, though his land straddles the Platte. But keeping his farm afloat is still not easy.
Like other farmers, Woodman is burdened with expenses for labor, seed grain, insurance, rent and taxes. He has to buy fuel for irrigation that can cost as much as $60 an acre, and the price is going up all the time. And irrigation systems are expensive. Woodman recently bought a new pivot for $80,000 that will take him years to pay off.
"It costs me about $650 an acre just for the machine," Woodman said. "Dad didn't pay that for the farm."
His father and grandfather installed the first irrigation well on the farm in 1936; since then, at least the availability of water has been certain. But the farm's location near the Platte River has placed Woodman at the center of a new debate between farmers who use groundwater to irrigate and those who use surface water. Surface-water irrigators claim that over-pumping of groundwater can cause surface water to dry up.
The Nebraska Department of Natural Resources has placed a moratorium on new wells along the Central Platte, including where Woodman lives. Woodman said he is not happy about the moratorium.
"The state's telling us we're pumping as much as we can pump," said Woodman, who also serves on the board of the Central Platte Natural Resources District. "The more times we use the Platte, the better off we are. It needs to be used before it leaves the state. I don't think we're mismanaging the river."
Farmers operate on such a tight margin that they are forced to be efficient and conserve whenever possible, he said. The power company, for example, charges farmers based on the horsepower used to pump water onto their fields, giving them an incentive to use less electricity and water.
"We're not out here trying to put on a lot of gallons of water," Woodman said.
In January of 2005, the state Supreme Court ruled that Spear T Ranch in the Nebraska Panhandle could sue nearby groundwater users when Pumpkin Creek, a North Platte River tributary that once flowed through the ranch, dried up. A resolution of that lawsuit is unlikely to end the controversy.
Farming isn't the only economic feature in the Platte Valley. A thriving recreation industry generates between $70.6 million and $115.8 million per year, according to a 1996 study by Texas-based consulting firm Fermata, Inc., on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"The value of the river is almost unquantifiable for those of us who enjoy waterfowl hunting on the Platte," said Chad Smith, director of the Nebraska field office of American Rivers, a national conservation organization. "We have some of the best hunting in the world right in our own back yard."
Hunters buy licenses, pay for gas, hotels and gear and sometimes buy or lease land along the Platte - all contributing to the economies of nearby towns.
But Smith said such recreation is under threat because the river is over-appropriated.
"Without a healthy river system, we won't attract waterfowl populations," he said.
Birds that rely on Platte River habitat also keep the Rowe Sanctuary and Iain Nicolson Audubon Center near Kearney open, said former director Paul Tebbel. Each year, more than 20,000 visitors come to the 1,250-acre sanctuary to see sandhill cranes and other birds that stop or nest in the area. Those visitors spend about $1 million each year in Kearney on food and lodging. A 1998 study by the EPA concluded that visitors who come to the Platte Valley for the annual migration spend about $285 apiece on such things as lodging, food and gasoline if they stay in the area for three days.
"If the Platte River wasn't here, we wouldn't be either," Tebbel said.
Traditional water-usage allocations should be changed to take the economic importance of recreation into account, he said.
Duane Hovorka, executive director of the Nebraska Wildlife Federation, said waterfowl and all the other species that depend on the Platte are under threat.
"The flow in the Central Platte is now about one-third of what it historically was," Hovorka said. "This means that in a typical year, two-thirds of the water needed for habitat is used upstream."
Biologically, the river habitat and animals can recover, he said. The main issue is cost.
Taxpayers are footing part of the bill to support wildlife habitat on the Platte. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has begun a $158 million program that will offer farmers 10- to 15-year contracts to take land along the Platte out of irrigated use and plant grass. The goal of this Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program is to conserve 125,000 acre-feet of water, increase the bird population by 25 percent and plant 85,000 acres of grassland.
"Over the 100-year history of putting water to use on irrigated farmland, millions of dollars have been invested, so it's not cheap by any means to try and reverse the process," Hovorka said.
Cities in the Platte River basin also need water. In eastern Nebraska, the populations of Lincoln and Omaha are forecast to experience phenomenal population growth, with an attendant growth in the need for water and power.
In the Omaha area, 187,845 customers depend on the Platte for water. Omaha's Municipal Utility District currently has the capacity to pump 104 million gallons of water out of the Platte River per day. A new Platte West Plant will increase the pumping capacity to 334 million gallons per day by 2008.
Lincoln gets 90 percent of its water from well fields that draw on the Platte River aquifer.
In September 2004, the Joslyn Castle Institute for Sustainable Communities issued its "Flatwater Metroplex" report, outlining the need for planning to control development along the I-80 corridor between Lincoln and Omaha. By 2025, more than a million people are expected to live in the area.
This will put a strain on water resources, said institute president Cecil Steward.
"There will be some communities in very dire straits sooner or later," he said.
The report urges planners to consider no-build zones to protect available water resources, including the Platte River.
The Platte also provides electricity. Lake McConaughy provides water to cool the 1,365 megawatt, coal-powered Gerald Gentleman Station, which is Nebraska's largest source of electricity.
Five hydropower plants rely on the Platte. When running at their peak, the plants produce a little more than 138 megawatts of electricity - enough to serve 75,000 customers, which is equivalent to the cities of Kearney, Grand Island and Aurora. NPPD representative Jeanne Schieffer says the total annual value of that power is about $20 million in a wet year, when there's plenty of water in the Platte.
Until now, state law and local natural resources districts have allocated Nebraska's water, but the market may soon play a role, said David Aiken, a specialist in agricultural and water law at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Aiken said that, in every Western state except Nebraska, water rights are bought and sold on the open market. In areas in Nebraska now closed to new water uses, such a market for water may arise as well.
"In the areas that have been closed, this will affect very much how cities and irrigators go about their business," Aiken said. "People will have to pay another person not to irrigate."
This situation could make things difficult for farmers.
"You would have to make a lot of money irrigating to come out ahead. There won't be a lot of new irrigation," Aiken said.
In the area around Fort Collins, Colo., rights to water in the South Platte River basin sell for between $1,500 and $3,000 per acre-foot, as listed on the Web site watercolorado.com.
"This whole idea of buying and selling water is going to be pretty big," Aiken said. "Communities say, 'We want to grow and we need water to grow.' That's true - but they're going to need money to buy it."
For now, the focus is on cooperation and careful planning to fairly divide the Platte River's resources.
The Joslyn Castle Institute is assembling a volunteer partnership to further plan development between Lincoln and Omaha.
"Without coordination and collaborative effort for sharing water resources, there's not going to be enough for everyone's interests," Steward said.
Farmer Scott Woodman said, "We really need stability between the state, natural resources districts, and surface and groundwater users. We need to ask, 'How are we going to do things in the future and keep everybody happy?' "
Since 2003, the 49-member Governor's Water Policy Task Force has enabled irrigators, recreation and wildlife advocates, city officials and regulators to work together on developing policy to satisfy all the state's needs for water - as much as possible.
In 1997, the federal government, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska agreed to cooperate in managing the Platte River to meet the needs of endangered and threatened species, as well as human needs for water. Irrigators, conservationists and government officials are all members of the Platte River Cooperative Agreement Governing Committee, formed to address water-allocation questions raised by that agreement.
"Collaborating is the future of good river management," committee member Chad Smith said. "Instead of poking each other with sticks and running to court, we're doing things collaboratively. These uses are not mutually exclusive. We are trying to strike a balance."
Carolyn Johnsen and Steve Hermann contributed to this report.
