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ORD — Forty-one of 200 applications to the Lower Loup Natural Resources District to add certified irrigated acres to farming operations were approved Thursday by the LLNRD board.

The 2,003 acres approved compare to nearly 13,000 acres sought for certification in the NRD’s 14 counties, including all or parts of Buffalo, Sherman and Custer counties.

LLNRD General Manager Leon Koehlmoos said field staff looked at each parcel that rated high on the district’s evaluation list. “It’s all good land ... areas better suited to irrigation,” he said.

Parcels approved ranged from four to 132 acres, from full pivots down to “four-acre adjustments.” Key criteria were soil types and river depletion factors that left acres close to the river with less value on the LLNRD’s rating system.

The program allowing 2,000 new acres to be developed for 2010 resulted from a Nebraska Department of Natural Resources decision in March not to designate the Loup and Elkhorn basins as fully appropriated. In other words, that water supplies equal water uses.

It was decided that the LLNRD could expand irrigated acres by up to 10,000 acres over the next four years. The board set the 2010 limit at 2,000 acres.

It likely will be late spring before LLNRD directors decide how many additional acres might be certified in 2011.

Koehlmoos said district officials are interested in setting up a water budget to remain under the fully appropriated level and establishing a water bank to ensure that water is available for future projects. However, current state law specifies that water banks can be established only in areas designated by DNR as fully appropriated or overappropriated.

Although some undesignated NRDs are creating water banks that are being recognized by DNR, Koehlmoos said LLNRD officials would feel better about having legislation that allows all NRDs to have water banks. Members of the Nebraska Association of Resources Districts passed a resolution at their annual conference in Kearney in September supporting that idea.

“We don’t want a puff of smoke in our hands,” he said, by setting aside water resources and then not being able to use them. So, the LLNRD board may wait until the 2010 legislative session ends in May to decide how to proceed with water banking and certifying more acres for 2011.

Phones were ringing at the LLNRD office in Ord Friday morning with calls from farmers wanting to know if their irrigated acre certification applications for 2010 were approved.

Koehlmoos said the staff already was preparing letters to all applicants that will include their scores and factors that rated high or low. The 2010 applications won’t be carried over, so new ones will have to be submitted to seek certified acres for 2011.

Also Thursday, the LLNRD board approved joining a lawsuit filed by the Central Platte NRD against the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency under the Freedom of Information Act. The North Platte-based Twin Platte NRD also is a part in the lawsuit.

Koehlmoos said the issue is access to FSA and Natural Resources Conservation Service records, particularly land use data that would have made certifying irrigated acres easier for the NRDs.

“It’s a duplication of government effort,” he said, adding that no financial information was sought. “We spent months gathering information we could have gotten by walking across the alley (to a USDA service center).”

e-mail to:

lori.potter@kearneyhub.com

 

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