Omaha World-Herald | By Paul Hammel | May 31, 2002 A Panhandle ranch has sued the State of Nebraska, claiming the state has allowed a local creek to dry up by failing to control groundwater irrigators.
That failure, according to the Spear T Ranch's lawsuit, has rendered worthless the ranch's legal right to irrigate from the creek, severely damaging the ranch's value, aesthetics and ability to grow crops.
The suit, which has been expected for several months, could send shock waves across the state by settling a growing conflict between irrigators who draw water from streams and irrigators who use groundwater. "It clearly raises some big issues," said Roger Patterson, director of the Nebraska Department of Water Resources, which was named defendant in the suit.
Patterson said the better forum to resolve the conflicts would be a special water policy task force, authorized this spring by the Nebraska Legislature.
Gov. Mike Johanns is expected to name the 49 members of the task force in June. The group has 18 months to recommend changes, if necessary, in state water laws.
"The first issue on the list is the groundwater-surface water issue," Patterson said.
Currently, use of water from rivers and streams in Nebraska is strictly controlled through state water allocations. The allocations can be suspended in times of drought. Such controls are currently in place in the moisture-short Panhandle.
Meanwhile, groundwater irrigators are virtually unregulated, even though it's known that pumping groundwater can deplete flows in an adjacent stream.
A lawsuit pitting the two types of irrigators was almost inevitable, particularly in an area such as the Panhandle, where water is scarce.
"Times are changing, and water supplies are certainly becoming tighter," said Patterson, noting the drought conditions in western Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado.
How a lawsuit is decided could determine which form of irrigation has superior legal rights. It could force reductions in the use of center-pivot irrigation systems, which dot the Nebraska landscape with circles of green crops, to allow more water to flow in nearby streams.
Presently, about 6.2 million acres of Nebraska farmland is irrigated by groundwater, compared with about 1.3 million acres irrigated by surface water.
The Spear T Ranch, situated southwest of Bridgeport, obtained surface water rights to Pumpkin Creek in 1954 and 1956. That gives the ranch a vested property right to water from the creek, said Tom Oliver, the ranch's attorney.
The ranch's lawsuit says the Department of Water Resources failed to protect those water rights by allowing dozens of wells to be drilled along Pumpkin Creek and the unrestricted pumping of groundwater.
The result is that the creek runs dry much of the year through the ranch, the lawsuit says. Without irrigation, the ranch cannot grow certain crops and the value of the land has been severely reduced, said ranch owner Rex Nielsen.Omaha World-Herald:
