Observations all along the line - Kimball & the Southern Panhandle First
Observations all along the line - Kimball & the Southern Panhandle First
Prior to its public hearing on Sept. 15 on the Districtwide Ground Water Management Area rules and regulations, the South Platte NRD has a planned information session to provide information that has been presented to the South Platte NRD board over the past few months from Thad Kuntz, principal hydrogeologist from Adaptive Resources, Inc., located in Scottsbluff.
Kuntz uses an updated version of the Western Water Use Management Modeling, or WWUMM, to help predict what the effect of using water at the current allocations will have on the Lodgepole Creek, the South Platte River, and the Ogallala Aquifer in the South Platte NRD area which includes all of the Kimball, Cheyenne and Deuel counties.
During recent Ground Water Advisory Committee Meetings in all three counties, the public got to see first-hand the same modeling that was presented to the board. Questions and comments were welcome and passed on to the board at the August board meeting. The comments along with the WWUMM information from Kuntz and presentations from Chris Kaiser and Travis Glanz on the Spring 2015 Ground Water Level Report and 2014 Water Usage Report respectively, are tools being used by the board to make their final decision regarding the irrigation allocations in each subarea represented in the Districtwide Ground Water Management Area Rules and Regulations.
The information session presented on Sept. 15 at 5 p.m. will be similar to the Ground Water Advisory Committee Meetings and the public will have the opportunity to ask questions during the session. The public hearing for comments, either written or oral, will follow at 6:30 p.m. or 30 minutes after the information session. Both will be at the Cheyenne County 4-H building located at the Cheyenne County fairgrounds in Sidney.
For more information about the proposed changes to the South Platte NRD Districtwide Ground Water Management Area Rules and Regulations, please call 308-254-2377 or stop by at 551 Parkland Dr. in Sidney. Visit our website at http://www.spnrd.org for the latest updates.