Nebraskans First is a non-profit, non-partisan, no-nonsense, straight-talking organization of Nebraska irrigators who are
dedicated to protecting Nebraska's groundwater for agriculture.

MESSAGE FROM NEBRASKANS FIRST PRESIDENT BOB HILGER

There is no question that our livelihoods are directly dependent upon groundwater under our land for irrigation.

I am a farmer and irrigator from Butler County. Today, I farm the same land my grandfather farmed seventy years ago. About fifteen years ago I helped organize NEBRASKANS FIRST for the sole purpose of protecting the groundwater rights of all Nebraska irrigators. The need for a farmer-directed groundwater irrigators coalition became critical as environmental activists and other well-funded special interest groups along with certain state government and federal agencies started pushing for laws that would alter our rights and reduce our freedom to irrigate. We have worked hard during the
1990’s derailing many dangerous legislative attempts to force more state regulation and government bureaucracy onto farmers’ backs.

Right now, irrigators in the Platte River Basin are in the crosshairs of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This federal agency, operating through an entity called the Governance Committee, has targeted massive Platte River flows and nearly 30,000 acres of farmland to enhance the habitat of certain birds and a fish. This threatening process has been deceptively tabbed the "Cooperative Agreement", even though it is anything but. The federal government’s plan is to transform a prime agricultural region of the middle Platte River Basin (between Lexington and Chapman) into a critical habitat corridor at the
expense of irrigated agriculture. The cost to taxpayers for just the first ten year phase of a thirty year, three phase program is 140 million dollars. 

We need your help to help us protect Nebraska farmers’ irrigation rights from being harmed by this program. Over the past four years we have attended and represented irrigators’ rights at many government meetings and hearings held across the state and also in Wyoming and Colorado, where irrigators there are also threatened by this basin-wide program. This work has been, and is, very time consuming and expensive.

Through our efforts we have built a strong core group of farmers in the targeted area who have shown up at these meetings in impressive numbers when their involvement as a show of strength and unity has been needed. We are working this issue very hard against powerful government and environmental adversaries. Again, we need your help. Irrigators farming anywhere near or along the Platte River from east to west need to rally to our cause.

NEBRASKANS FIRST has a ten year proven record of tackling difficult issues involving irrigators’ rights and freedoms head-on. Our group is 100% pure Nebraskan. Our primary business is to fight for irrigation rights. Our directors and members are all Nebraska irrigators. We are doing what must be done. The so-called "Cooperative Agreement" process is a major threat to us, but it is not a "done deal" and can and must be challenged. As a fellow farmer and irrigator, I ask that you join our group today by completing the following membership application and mailing it along with your annual dues.  These dues are an investment in our lives and our children’s and grandchildren’s future in agriculture.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Nebraskans First--Cornhusker Plaza #401--301 South 13th Street--Lincoln, NE 68508

402.434.2938----Fax 402.434.2935

CLICK HERE TO EMAIL

last changed 04/08/2009 by
Matt Hilger