URNRD grant will aid water use tracking

    U.S. Senator Deb Fischer, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee, applauded the U.S. Department of the Interior’s grant announcement to provide $1.93 million in grant funding to two water conservation projects in southwest Nebraska.
    A portion of the funding for the WaterSMART Program comes from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, she said.
    The Upper Republican Natural Resources District’s High Plains Aquifer Preservation and Irrigation Scheduling Project will receive $834,310 in funding. The URNRD office is in Imperial.
    That project will install 2,000 digital meter heads and transceivers at irrigation wells to transmit water usage information and crop evapotranspiration rates via a radio network.
    The real-time usage data will correlate with the district’s water-use allocations, allowing irrigators to manage water use relative to their allocation.
    The project is expected to reduce irrigation water use in the area by over 9%, or about 24,310 acre-feet annually.
    Conserved water will remain in the aquifer and help the state maintain compliance with the Republican River Compact and associated settlement agreement which allocates Republican River water use between Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado.
    “Nebraska’s natural resource districts empower locally-elected community members to effectively manage our water resources. I’m glad to see the bipartisan infrastructure law, which I supported, invest in this unique system of stewardship as we look to protect communities from the impacts of severe drought,” said Sen. Fischer.
    “The WaterSMART grant will modernize water management for our NRD and hundreds of farmers across three of the most agriculturally productive counties in Nebraska, helping to preserve the High Plains Aquifer for future generations of farmers,” said URNRD General Manager Jasper Fanning.
    Fanning said the URNRD has been working hand-in-hand for 45 years with farmers to preserve water by implementing water conservation programs and regulations.
    “Thanks to work from Sen. Fischer and others to secure funding for projects like ours, we’ll take a big step forward in our efforts to conserve water, increase efficiency and maintain productivity,” Fanning said.
    The Middle Republican Natural Resources District’s Remote Irrigation Meter and Irrigation Water Conservation Project will receive $1.1 million in funding. The money will provide enough resources to install telemetry meters on 100% of the groundwater wells in the Middle Republican.