Okay - 'COKANE' is an acronym for 'COlorado, KAnsas, & NEbraska'. Why, what do you think it meant? Read on...
Here is Part 2.
The NGWA Groundwater Summit and NGWA-AWRA Groundwater Visibility Initiative workshop are in progress. But they're not the story.
My tradition of starting a Denver conference with a brief two- or three-day water-related excursion proved to be quite a revelation this time. Inspired by William Ashworth's exceptional Ogallala Blue: Water and Life on the Great Plains my brief odyssey atop the Ogallala Aquifer (OA) amid the Sandhills (also 'Sand Hills') of Nebraska and in northwestern Kansas proved to be a remarkable experience. I had already sampled the southern portion of the Ogallala Aquifer in Lubbock last February but little did I realize that this trip would be so revelatory and reminiscent.
Throughout this post and Part 2 on 30 April I will at times list page numbers in ( ) without citing a reference. They refer to pages in William Ashworth's excellent book. At the risk of sounding cloying, I urge you to read it. So glad I finally did so after 10 years.
Here goes....
1) Sporhase Surprise (pages 197-98)
As I headed northeast from Denver on Interstate 76 (I-76) on 22 April my mind was pretty blank. But as I approached the Nebraska state line and a rendezvous with I-80, I realized that I must be near Sporhase country. Indeed I was.
The Sporhase case involved irrigators (Joy Sporhase and his son-in-law, Delbert Moss) whose farm straddled the CO - NE state line. In 1972 they used water (from the Ogallala Aquifer, naturally) pumped from a well in Chase County, Nebraska, to irrigate land in Nebraska and Phillips County, Colorado. It should be noted that at that time Colorado did not issue permits for high-capacity irrigation wells in Phillips County.
Nebraska allowed Sporhase to do this only if water transported out of it to another state could be transported back into Nebraska. But since Colorado would not allow Sporhase to sink a well in Colorado he could not irrigate his Nebraska land. Nebraska did not take kindly to this export of its water to a 'non-reciprocity' state and ordered Sporhase to stop. Sporhase sued the state, lost and took it to SCOTUS, which found for Sporhase in 1982. The case is significant because it: 1) established water as an article of interstate commerce whose export a state could not prohibit altogether; 2) set forth a national policy governing interstate groundwater allocation; and 3) asserted that state 'ownership' of water resources is a 'legal fiction' (see Jesse Richardson's comment below).
Big deal? You bet!
Want more? Read Overtapped Oasis starting on page 80 and this abstract.
2) 'Too Thick to Drink, Too Thin to Plow' - Platte Pleasures
Those words can be applied to any number of western USA rivers but I always think of the Platte River and the two rivers whose confluence just east of North Platte, NE, creates it, the South and North Platte Rivers. The very name Nebraska is derived from an Indian word meaning 'flat water' and French explorers called it rivière plate or 'flat river'. Regardless of its etymology, this was my first vision of the river itself.
The Platte River watershed holds a lot of significance in the annals of the upper Great Plains. It's the first Great Plains river I recall reading about in grammar school and it was quite an experience to see it at last.
The North Platte is dammed by Kingsley Dam just north of Ogallala, NE, to form Lake McConaughy, the largest body of surface water in Nebraska. At full pool it holds about 1.75 MAF, covers about 30,600 acres and has about 76 miles of shoreline. It has beautiful beaches,
courtesy of its location at the southern margin of the Sandhills.
The reservoir is not a Federal project. The Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District owns and operates the dam, reservoir, and power plant. The CNPPID is a political subdivision of the state.
Ashworth's book has many pages devoted to these three rivers and their significance: Platte (25, 42, 92-93, 97, 124, 134, 206; South Platte: 83, 85, 136, 189-90, 202-3, 249; North Platte: 134, 136, 171-72, 192, 201-4.
3) Sandhills Saturday
On 23 April I headed north from the town of North Platte to take State Highways 92 and 61 on a counterclockwise loop to explore the Sandhills, a large expanse of grass-stabilized sand dunes that cover almost 20,000 square miles (about 25%) of Nebraska - one of the most impressive 'sand seas' in the world. The dunes are quite impressive.
Not much cropland, but cattle ranches - mostly Black Angus - were quite frequent. Whenever I saw a gully or blowout it looked like a huge bunker on a golf course. I pulled off the road infrequently to avoid getting stuck in the sandy shoulders. I encountered two small towns of Tryon and Arthur, each of which had about 150 residents. There were times when I could have sworn I was in a coastal region - Cape Cod came to mind.
The Ogallala Aquifer lies beneath the Sandhills but because the land is not irrigable, the aquifer's water will likely remain there. There are numerous small, presumably shallow, ponds scattered about the landscape. Clint Carney (97-99, 106-114) who suggested I take this route, said they might be groundwater discharge areas
Many pages in Ashworth's book mention the Sandhills: 26-7, 93-103, 106-113, 116, 187, 241, 247. A few pictures I took follow.
The following were taken on State Highway 92 about midway between Tryon and Arthur. It shows a thick stand of planted conifers (windbreaks - Nebraska is home to Arbor Day) ) sheltering a Black Angus ranch.
Some blowouts...
More sand....
My pictures don't do the Sandhills justice. Quite a landscape.
But Clint Carney left out another iconic Nebraska site: I did not make it up to Carhenge in Alliance, NE.
To be continued...
"Nebraska: Making the Plains Great Since 1867." - Unknown
Another point that the Supreme Court made in Sporhase, that many seem to overlook (maybe because they don't like it) is that state "ownership" of water resources is a "legal fiction". States continue to assert ownership over water though, ignoring the Sporhase ruling.
Posted by: Jesse Richardson | Thursday, 28 April 2016 at 09:05 AM