Nebraska's planned canal could hurt northeast Colorado farmers

This is the third of four articles. It's part of our series: Perkins County Canal: Boon or Boondoggle?

On his northeast Colorado farm east of Ovid, Colorado, Don Schneider drives his pickup down a gravel road past cornfields, and talks about the place.

“My son and I, we farm about 2000 acres, irrigated -- most of it has irrigation wells on it, supplemented with (a) reservoir water right,” he says.

The Schneiders use that water to grow alfalfa, wheat and milo, along with the corn.

How farmers like Schneider manage that water involves some delicate timing. He takes it from the river when it’s not needed for irrigation, from October 15 to April 1 every year. He puts it into recharge ponds on his property, where it soaks into the ground to supply so-called augmentation wells. Then, during irrigation season, its available for Schneider to use some water on his crops, and send some down the river to Nebraska.

Schneider stops the pickup at the edge of a canal. He walks over to where a pipe, emerging from the bank, is dumping water in.

“This is the Petersen Canal, and that's where my augmentation well dumps into, and then they transfer that water to the state line at the tail end of the ditch, which goes in Nebraska,” he says.

It’s a system that helps Colorado send Nebraska the amount of water it’s entitled to under the century-old South Platte River Compact with Nebraska. During the irrigation season – April 1 to Oct. 15 – that’s 120 cubic feet per second: think 120 basketballs full of water rolling across the state line every second.

This system, of retiming the river flows through recharge, helps Colorado farmers. But Jesse Bradley, assistant director of Nebraska’s Department of Natural Resources, says it’s not working for Nebraska:

“We've been living this life where we're dying to death from a thousand cuts, because it's all these small-scale recharge projects,” Bradley said.

Bradley said those projects store water that would otherwise flow downriver to Nebraska.

Like most western states, when it comes to the right to use water, Colorado gives priority to the people who started using it first.

But as part of the 1923 South Platte River Compact, Colorado agreed to give the Perkins County Canal priority if Nebraska ever built the canal. That means if Nebraska builds the canal, it would be entitled to 500 cubic feet per second of South Platte River water in the non-irrigation season. And that right would be ahead of rights like Schneider’s.

Schneider says by the time his well was drilled in the 1950s, no one was thinking Nebraska would build eventually build the Perkins County Canal.

“Oh God no. No, because you know back when they did that 1923 or whatever it was they thought it was going to work. Well after the first few years they just sort of abandoned it, and didn't touch it again for 99 more years,” he said.

It’s understandable after 100 years of inactivity that people wouldn’t think about the canal’s priority, says Kent Miller, general manager of Nebraska’s Twin Platte Natural Resources District. But Miller says, it was their responsibility to be aware of it.

“Probably after 100 years people kind of started ignoring it. But still, if you buy a house in Nebraska and it's got certain restrictions on it and you didn't check them out ahead of time, is that's the state's fault or is that my fault? And that's my fault,” he said.

Schneider says if Nebraska builds the canal, it will cut down on the amount of water his farm can use for irrigation.

“If they pulled 500 CFS out of the river, there wouldn't be enough water for all of our augmentation ponds to put water back into the ground to percolate back in to keep our wells recharged and to keep the compact off,” he said.

In other words, keeping up with the water Colorado has to send to Nebraska in the irrigation season means less water for Colorado irrigators like Schneider to recharge their wells in the non-irrigation season. And that means less water available for their crops when they need it.

Bradley acknowledges building the canal could hurt Colorado farmers. But he says activities in Nebraska, including irrigation and electrical power generation, are threatened by Colorado’s increasing demands for South Platte water.

“They may or may not be able to continue their operations as is. It sounds like they're concerned about it, and we've heard that concern. But we're concerned about it because if they keep doing it, we can't do our operations. We can't run our irrigation canals. We can't run the water we want to run into Gerald Gentlemen (a coal-powered generating plant near Sutherland, Nebraska), and down into our hydropower systems," Bradley says.

Colorado officials say they recognize Nebraska’s right to build the canal, but they’re going to insist it does everything according to the century-old compact, which doesn’t mention things like electrical generation. We’ll look at some of those practical and legal issues in our next and final story in this series, Perkins County Canal – Boon or Boondoggle?