Visioning 2026 Blog
Northeast Nebraska Impacted by Water Use Ruling
Omaha World-Herarld reported that Brian Dunnigan, director of the State Natural Resources Department, issued a designation temporarily banning new groundwater irrigation wells, halts new permits for diversion of river water for irrigation and stops farmers from expanding the number of irrigated acres in their operations.
This impacts the watersheds of the Upper and Lower Elkhorn, Lower Platte South, Lower Platte North, Upper and Lower Loup, and the Papio-Missouri Rivers.
Public hearings on the designation will be held across the basins during the next three months with respective Natural Resource Districts responsible for developing and implementing water use plans.
Just establishing a temporary ban will have economic development impact for farmers, industries, and communities. Not knowing whether you can develop land for irrigated crops will have an adverse impact on farm sale prices. Communities wishing to expand their industrial base to included expanding existing operations (e.g., ethanol production) may be affected in the near term as well as the long term.
This is changing the economic engine of Northeast Nebraska, especially in the production agricultural area. This will directly impact well drillers, irrigation manufacturers, irrigation service centers, and indirectly farm machinery distributors, seed and fertilizer suppliers, banking operations, county governments, rural electric districts, etc.
We now need to transform our thinking on how best to use the existing water resources, e.g., encourage tourism that has water features, creative molecular economy, etc.
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