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state water law goes into effect July 16 By Robert Pore robert.pore@theindependent.com Publication Date: 06/26/04 A comprehensive water bill passed by the Nebraska Legislature earlier this year will impact the way Nebraskans view its water resources when it becomes law on July 16. And according to Ron Bishop, manager of the Central Platte Natural Resources District, the district took a proactive position in anticipation of the new state water law when its board of directors declared a temporary well-drilling moratorium last year on land bordering the Platte River in the NRD. According to Bishop, the main impact of LB962 is that the state Department of Natural Resources will make a determination about the CPNRD's part of the Platte River Basin on whether it's fully appropriated when it comes to number of groundwater wells. "It is their (Department of Natural Resources) belief and intent to declare the Platte River from Columbus to the Wyoming and Colorado state lines as fully appropriated," he said. "Fully appropriated," Bishop explains, means, "You can't make any more new uses of either surface water or interconnected groundwater without it jeopardizing already existing water uses." "If you expand the uses of it, it's going to have to count from an already existing use," he said. "It could hurt either a surface water right or a groundwater right." Bishop said it was in anticipation of LB962 that the CPNRD's board of directors approved the temporary moratorium on new well drilling along a designated area of the Platte River in the district. He said if the board had not passed the moratorium last year, the Department of Natural Resources would have done it for the district as a result of the new water law. Bishop said he expects the Department of Natural Resources to make the designation that the CPNRD area is fully appropriated at or around the time LB962 becomes law in mid-July. "Along with that designation, they will outline an area that they think groundwater and surface water are interconnected," he said. For most of the CPNRD, Bishop said that area, especially the eastern two-thirds of the districts, will be similar, but not exactly what the district has already designated for the new-well-drilling suspension. Some areas will expand boundaries and include new wells, while other areas will get smaller. And within that designated area, the state will issue a stay on new wells, which Bishop said will have no effect on the CPNRD because of the existing moratorium on new wells. But, while there will not be much of a change in the eastern part of the CPNRD, in the western part of Buffalo County and Dawson County, from Elm Creek west, that stay boundary will expand "...considerably, perhaps another six to eight miles away from the Platte River," Bishop said. That area is being expanded because the DNR is including tributaries of the Platte River in the stay area. "The area that would be subject to the suspension on wells will increase in the extreme Buffalo County area and Dawson County by 65 to 70 percent," Bishop said. Also, he said, DNR will probably designate that area in Buffalo and Dawson counties as "overappropriated" when it comes to groundwater development in September. The new water law will also give the DNR the responsibility of examining water basins throughout Nebraska each year to determine whether the those basins are either fully appropriated or overappropriated. "That process where the Department of Natural Resources looks at the basins and makes those determinations is one of the major changes in LB962 from the law that we were operating with before," Bishop said. He said prior to LB962, that responsibility was with the Natural Resource Districts. "The state has taken that authority for making that determination, but everything else stays the same, as it is still up to the Natural Resources District to do the groundwater part of the plan like it was before," Bishop said. "We will just have to see how it works." Jay Rempe, ag economist for the Nebraska Farm Bureau, said LB692 will also have an impact on municipalities. "Any municipality that wants to expand its well use, or well field or drill a new well, in areas that have been designated fully appropriated or overappropriated will have to work with their local NRD subject to the integrated management plan that the NRD put in place," Rempe said. "But I don't think it will be an issue for the NRD to make sure that will be allowed to happen."
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