About 300 farmers who pump irrigation water out of the Big Blue River in southeast Nebraska won’t be able to do so until further notice, because water levels are too low.
The Lincoln Journal Star reports that the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources sent shut-off notices Monday to farmers with surface water rights issued after Nov. 1, 1968.
Keith Paulsen, head of the agency’s Lincoln field office, said the orders were necessary to comply with a compact between Nebraska and Kansas that requires a certain amount of water to flow across state lines in the Big Blue and Little Blue basins.
Paulsen said the agency’s order affects about 500 surface water right permits in the Big Blue River basin, or about 300 individual farmers. The area includes the following Gage, Saline, Seward, Butler, Polk, York, Hamilton and Adams counties.
“The Little Blue is not closed. It’s got plenty of flows,” Paulsen said. The last time the state closed the Big Blue River to comply with the compact was in 2006; for the Little Blue, it was 2008.
“It’s going to take significant rainfall before we will open it up again,” Paulsen said. “It’s a critical time for farmers right now. They are not happy.”
The agency also issued shut-off orders on June 19 for the Platte River basin, including its tributaries, the Elkhorn and Loup rivers.
Paulsen said those shut-off orders were issued to comply with an instream flow water right held by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission for endangered species protection.
About 200 irrigators with Platte basin surface water rights issued after 1993 are affected, he said.
Mike Goossen, who irrigates nearly 1,200 acres from the Big Blue River with multiple permits, told the Beatrice Daily Sunhat shutting off his surface water reduced his irrigation area to about 40 percent of its capacity.
Goossen said the shutdown should not hinder his crop production, at least in the short term.
“It all depends on how long this continues because we’ll just start to fall farther behind,” Goossen said. “Right now, we are in a position where we kept up pretty well and the corn is soaked up pretty good, but it just takes 10 days to two weeks until it needs more water. If we don’t get any more rain and the drought continues, in a couple of weeks we will be stressing over our corn again.”
Goossen said in the weeks leading up to the notice, he has been irrigating “full force” for his crops in need, while it still was allowed.
When the shutdown notice came, it was far from a surprise.
“When it gets dry, we look at the river every day when we irrigate and knew it was going down,” Goossen said. “As I watched that, I wasn’t a bit surprised.”
Before getting official word, many farmers who irrigate from the Big Blue River were irrigating as much as they could, having foreseen the shutdown, said University of Nebraska-Lincoln Gage County extension educator Paul Hay.