On July 1, 1997 the governors of Nebraska (Nelson), Wyoming (Geringer) and Colorado (Romer), and the Secretary of the Interior (Babbitt) signed an agreement to develop a basin wide recovery program designed to protect and enhance habitat for threatened and endangered species in the Central Platte River region.

 

Basically, the goals of the program are to develop 30,000 acres of land for habitat and generate massive new river flows. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has stated that approximately 417,000 acre-feet of water on average is needed. The program seeks to develop one-third of this total (130,000 acre-feet) during the first increment (10-13 years) of the multi-phased program. (Average annual flows of the Platte River as measured at Grand Island are about 1,000,000 acre-feet.)

 

The entity which is overseeing the Cooperative Agreement is called the Governance Committee. Environmental groups on this committee have veto power over major policy issues. Nebraska's water users' representative on the Governance Committee is a power company and the alternate is another power company.

 

The federal government and its environmentalist allies are targeting irrigation to satisfy their instream flow goals.

 

The cost to taxpayers for just the first phase of the multi-phase program is $140 million. (Considering the tough times farmers and ranchers are now enduring, Nebraska taxpayers should be appalled at this mismanagement of tax dollars.)

 

The Governance Committee is desperately working to slap together their species and habitat plan by early 2002. If the program is adopted in accordance with the wishes of the federal government and their environmentalist allies, ultimate control of our water will be handed over to the US Fish and Wildlife Service under an oversight program they call "adaptive management".

 

The Governance Committee continues to "spin" the Cooperative Agreement as being a good thing for agriculture. In fact, the goal of the program is to deter new irrigation development and complicate existing irrigation.

 

It took over a century of hard work and investment by Nebraska farmers to develop the Central Platte River Basin from nothing into a productive agricultural powerhouse. Our generation must not be the one that allows this success story to be undone for an unnecessary and contrived species/habitat program.