Colorado’s solution in pipeline

Story from OmahaNewsstand

As Nebraska and Kansas water czars wade closer to non-binding arbitration to settle troubles over sharing Republican River water, Colorado is moving ahead with plans to divert itself out of the fray.

“Frankly, when you’re in a hole, you need to stop digging deeper,” said Ken Knox, deputy state engineer for the Colorado Division of Water Resources.

This week, Knox and his boss, Dick Wolfe, the state engineer, hope to convince their Nebraska and Kansas counterparts that Colorado’s pipeline plan is a viable solution to that state’s share of basin water problems.

“I can’t make it rain,” Knox said, explaining the necessity of building a $71 million pipeline to the Nebraska border and pumping underground water into the Republican River.

The bulk of the cost went to buying water rights on about 9,600 acres of farmland on Colorado’s eastern plains. Colorado paid more than $50 million, or $5,300 an acre.

A 13-mile pipeline and infrastructure is budgeted at $21 million. Construction is expected to begin later this year.

The project is financed by a $14.50 tax per irrigated acre on landowners in the Republican River Water Conservation District around the streams that create the river’s headwaters.

Colorado shares water rights on the Republican, a 550-mile river that flows from the eastern Plains across part of southern Nebraska and into part of northern Kansas. The river provides water for irrigation, drinking, recreation and other uses in those three states. Its use is governed by a 1943 compact among the three states that allocates 49 percent to Nebraska, 40 percent to Kansas and 11 percent to Colorado.

Kansas says Nebraska and Colorado continue to use more than their share of the river basin water in violation of water use rules spelled out by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2002 settlement of a Kansas-instigated lawsuit.

The states could be headed back to the high court.

Colorado’s Wolfe, Nebraska’s Ann Bleed and Kansas’ David Barfield plan to meet Tuesday and Wednesday in Kansas City, Mo., in a special meeting of the Republican River Compact Administration.

The meeting was forced when Barfield submitted Kansas’s dispute with Nebraska to the compact administration as a fasttrack issue in February.

Kansas formally declared in December that Nebraska significantly consumed more than its share of Republican River water from 2003 through 2006. Farmers use the vast majority of water pumped out of the basin to irrigate crops. Excessive usage violates the compact that allocates Republican water among the three basin states.

Barfield proposed that Nebraska cease pumping from all irrigation wells within 2.5 miles of the Republican and its tributaries and from wells added after 2000. He also demands that Nebraska pay unspecified monetary damages.

Nebraska state and local water officials oppose Barfield’s remedy as inefficient and likely to have a devastating economic impact on farmers and communities.

Bleed, Barfield and Wolfe are the compact administration’s only members. If they don’t resolve the dispute with a unanimous vote during this week’s meetings, Kansas is expected to invoke nonbinding arbitration.

“We’re all to agree. If not, I assume we’ll be in arbitration,” Bleed said.

If arbitration fails, Barfield has said Kansas would sue Nebraska in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Bleed is expected to defend Nebraska’s attempts to remedy its overuse of the river water. These include reducing groundwater pumping by farmers and buying river water from irrigators who hold rights to the flows and release it downstream to Kansas.

Nebraska’s state and local water managers have informally discussed following Colorado’s pipeline example and pumping water into the Republican near Guide Rock, where the river flows into Kansas.

But such river augmentation projects aren’t yet part of Nebraska’s working list of remedies for its troubles with Kansas.

Knox said Colorado, like Nebraska, wrestles with how to meet its water obligations to its downstream neighbors without damaging the rural economy.

“It’s simplistic, but what Nebraska and Kansas choose to do or not do is their business,” he said. “We’re trying to get our house in order.”

The pipeline project is one tool Colorado can use to comply with the compact.

“We’re looking at this issue with binoculars,” Knox said. “The pipeline helps us immediately — during the next 10 to 20 years — but I’m mindful that we need to prepare for the period 20 to 100 years from now.”