Irrigators agree to sell water to fend off lawsuit

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By ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

A wet spring is helping the Republican River Basin in southwest Nebraska recover slowly from years of drought.

But the management of the Bostwick Irrigation District at Red Cloud and the state Department of Natural Resources were moving at a much faster pace Tuesday on a deal in which the state will pay $5.6 million to acquire the rights to about 17,500 acre-feet of Republican water for delivery to Kansas.

The Bostwick board of directors decided Tuesday morning to accept the state’s offer. By mid-afternoon, Natural Resources Director Ann Bleed made a $3 million response.

“I just signed the contract about an hour ago and handed over to them a check for partial payment,” Bleed said.

For the second year in a row, some 250 Bostwick irrigators have agreed not to use surface water from the Republican. The water instead will go downstream to Kansas irrigators as Nebraska tries to fend off a lawsuit that could arise from violation of the Republican River Compact.

Last year’s price tag was $2.5 million.

“In my view, the purchase of surface water does two very important things,” Bleed said. “One, it does provide water to Kansas. And, two, I think it’s a demonstration of not only the state, but also natural resources districts in the basin and people in the basin to take responsibility and to do what they can to comply with the compact.”

The possible lawsuit is one of many effects of a prolonged drought that has depleted the river, its tributaries and reservoirs.

Crop producers in the Bostwick area went through four decades before encountering circumstances in which they got no water from the Republican for their cornfields.

Now it’s happened for four years in a row, the last two because of cash compensation for a diminished supply that fell far short of the irrigators’ needs through the entire growing season.

Bostwick Manager Mike Delka is hoping that better precipitation in 2007 will continue and that district irrigation operations will be back to normal next year.

“We would hope that would be the case,” Delka said. “We’d rather deliver water than sell water.”

In the last 30 days, Harlan County Reservoir has risen by about 3 feet and its contents have gone from 183,000 acre feet to 204,000 acre feet.

But that won’t have any effect on a situation in which Nebraska has failed to meet its obligations to Kansas for several years in a row.

Bleed conceded that attempts to solve that problem for 2007 with a surface water purchase are more expensive than paying farmers to quit irrigating with groundwater farther from the river channel.

“I think one of the big issues is that, if you’re retiring acres at some distance from the river, it’s not going to have an immediate impact on the river. If you take surface water, that’s an immediate impact. That’s a big difference.”

Natural resources districts in the basin are also buying water on their own from two other irrigation districts to compensate Kansas.

“They’re saying ‘We’re doing what we need to do to be in compliance with the compact,’” Bleed said, “and it’s unprecedented.”

Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.