LOWER LOUP NRD BOARD OK’S 2,002 NEW IRRIGATED ACRES
The Lower Loup Natural Resources District Board of Directors has approved 2,002.62 new irrigated acres beginning in 2011. The NRD Board approved the new irrigation at their monthly meeting in November.
NRD General Manager Leon "Butch" Koehlmoos said 53 of the 215 applications received by the NRD for new irrigation scored the highest using ranking criteria established by the NRD Board. The Board had set a target of 2,000 new acres for 2011, the second of four years that new irrigation could be allowed.
State law allows NRDs in river basins where a fully-appropriated designation has been reversed to develop up to 10,000 new irrigated acres over a four year period. In 2009, the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reversed a determination that the lower Platte River Basin, including the Loup River systems, was fully-appropriated. A basin is considered fully-appropriated when the maximum level of sustainable development of both groundwater and surface water has been reached.
NRD Assistant Manager Russell Callan said that through use of the Elkhorn-Loup Model (ELM), District staff was able to determine that the newly approved irrigated acres would not lead to the river basin being declared fully appropriated. The NRD staff ranked applications using criteria that included river depletion factors, irrigation concentration, and soil types. Koehlmoos said that he was extremely pleased with the ranking process developed by NRD staff. He said that it provided a fair and equitable system for awarding the new acres.
Callan said that after applications were ranked, the highest scoring parcels were visited by NRD field staff before being submitted to the NRD Board for approval. The new irrigation was granted for parcels ranging in size from 1.2 to 140.43 acres.
Koehlmoos said that the NRD Board would have the discretion to consider allowing additional irrigated acres over the next two years. He said that the NRD is also working to develop a water banking system that could be established using the remaining available irrigated acres. Koehlmoos said that the NRD hopes to work with DNR to establish the water bank, which under state law is currently only available to NRDs in fully- or over-appropriated river basins.
