Water a Campaign Issue
As you can see in the about me page, I am involved in water. I am convinced that water will be one of the major issues in Nebraska political races. This will be especially true for any race west of York. And while water may not be an issue that people vote on in Lincoln and Omaha it will be an issue that will directly affect their pocket books. Tom Osborne was kind enough to give me a 30 minute interview. (To be posted shortly). You can see in that interview that I asked a number of questions about water. The reason is this.
In 1943 Nebraska made an agreement with Kansas and Colorado on how to divide the Republican River. This is the river that enters in the southwest corner of the State and exits in south central Nebraska. In 1998 Kansas sued Nebraska saying Nebraska was using too much water. The US Supreme Court ruled that groundwater must be considered when decided how much water each state gets. In 2003, Nebraska made an out of court settlement that decided the formulas on how groundwater would be factored in. The first deadline for compliance is Dec 2007. It has become apparent that Nebraska is going to fail to meet its obligation by the end of 2007 and hence is going to owe some serious damages to Kansas. There is also the real possibility that most of the 13,000 irrigation wells in the area could be forced to shut down. This would devastate the economy of Grant, Imperial, McCook, Curtis, Cambridge, Alma, Holdrege, Rising City, and Superior. The State would have to pay the bill which in my opinion will be $20,000,000 for the first year and somewhere around $10,000,000 a year thereafter.
This is an avoidable problem but it will require Nebraska politicians to act quickly.
You can see that this is not just my opinion but is now a fear shared by many of the people involved. You can read the newspaper headlines by visiting www.waterclaim.org and clicking on the links from there.
Any candidate for Governor, Senate, 3rd District, Legislature, or NRD will have to deal with this issue. That is why I am asking them questions on the subject of water.
There are many other issues as well as water but the amount of time allowed limits the number of questions. For the high profile races, we will return with additional questions.
Technorati: Republican River, Water