Improvements along the Platte River Basin are designed to maintain habitats and promote water conservation.
After a 1997 multigovernment agreement, the Platte River Recovery Implementation Program was created by the Platte River Governance Committee, a group comprising representatives from the states of Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado, along with the US Bureau of Reclamation, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and water users and environmental groups from the Platte River Basin. The committee formulated a detailed proposal to improve and maintain habitat as well as provide compliance with the Endangered Species Act for existing and future water uses in each state. After nine years, the process was completed in September 2006, with US Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne signing the record of decision and the three participating states’ governors and the secretary signing the implementing agreement for the program in December 2006. The agreement enables water projects and activities in the Platte River Basin to continue while implementing offsetting measures. Done in unison among the three states, the measures would be less costly in terms of money and water resources.
For more than two decades, the Platte River—which runs through Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado—has been a stage for conflict between the need to sustain the lives of four threatened and endangered species and human water users. Several attempts and many negotiations were conducted throughout the years to address the issue, and in 1997 the three states and the US secretary of interior reached an agreement on the framework for a recovery program, which became the 1997 cooperative agreement on the Platte River. Finally—10 years after the agreement was signed in an effort to jointly pursue a basin-wide effort to improve and maintain habitat for those species—the program is now poised for implementation.
“This recovery program is an outstanding collaborative effort among interest groups to cooperatively address the needs of endangered species and ensure that current uses of basin water can continue,” says Kempthorne in a statement to the media.
The ultimate goal in the first stage of implementation—anticipated to take 13 years—is to have 10,000 acres of habitat in the Central Platte region restored while also providing up to 130,000 to 150,000 acre-feet (an acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons) of water flow improvement to the target flows identified for the four species. According to John Lawson, the Wyoming-area manager for the US Bureau of Reclamation, after the administrative structure is in place, a budget of $13 million to $15 million annually is anticipated in order to start acquiring land and implementing water projects. He has been involved in the cooperative agreement process from the very beginning.
As the program moves into the implementation stage, a new governance committee is being formed, consisting of a representative each from the US Bureau of Reclamation and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, three water-user representatives from the Platte River Basin at large, two environmental conservation representatives, and a delegate from each state’s governor. “That in itself—from a collaborative process—is quite a coup,” notes Lawson. “What a neat process to show as an example of how such a diversity of interests can get together and formulate a plan that’s acceptable to all of us.”
The program is expected to cost $317 million in cash and cash equivalents to implement. The federal government is expected to provide half the funding; the other half will be contributed by the three states through non-federal funds, water, and lands.
Three key methods in improving the habitat include:
- . Retiming river flows to improve habitat conditions in the spring, summer, and early fall to reduce shortages to the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s recommended target flows in the Central Platte River by 130,000 to 150,000 acre-feet on an average annual basis
- . Testing the assumption that managing flow in the central Platte River also improves habitat for the pallid sturgeon in the lower Platte River
- . Leasing or acquiring land from willing sellers in the central Platte habitat area to restore habitat, with a focus on wet meadow areas and other areas of wide unvegetated river channel
In the Beginning … Nebraska
It all started with the whooping crane in the ’70s. The whooping crane was placed on the endangered species list, and its critical habitat was designated in 100 miles of river in the central Platte River valley from Lexington, NE, to Chapman, NE.
“Following that, when the impact of any new water project proposed in the basin—some have been proposed in Wyoming, some in Colorado, some in Nebraska—were evaluated on the whooping crane and its critical habitat, the US Fish and Wildlife Service concluded those actions would jeopardize the continued existence of the species,” says Curt Brown, who was the Platte River Environmental Impacts Statements study manager for the US Bureau of Reclamation.
“From that point forward,” he continues, “the Endangered Species Act issues related to the whooping crane and then also the pallid sturgeon—a listed large river fish that uses part of the Platte River—became that conflict between the further development of the Platte River and impacts on species in Nebraska.”
Joining the affected species was the endangered interior least tern and threatened piping plover. Federally funded or permitted water projects cannot increase the risk of extinction or threatened or endangered species or adversely affect their critical habitat. For the past two decades, the US Fish and Wildlife Service determined many water projects in the Platte River Basin that altered the river, and nearby habitat did just that in the central and lower Platte in Nebraska.
Over the last 150 years, some 90% of the habitat used by the endangered or threatened bird species has been lost to water storage and diversion projects throughout the basin and land development along the river. That habitat was originally broad, shallow, sandy, and mostly without vegetation before the ’80s—conditions favored by the four targeted species. “Anything that takes nine years to negotiate is a very complicated process,” notes Brown. “Some fairly remarkable things had to take place in the basin.”
Nine years ago, Nebraska was one of the last states in the West that had no legal integration of groundwater and surface-water management, says Brown. “While surface-water rights in the Platte River were regulated by the state and administered by the state engineer so you couldn’t put a new diversion from the river because you’d be taking water from somebody who had a senior water right, what you could do is virtually drill a well in the river and pump an infinite amount of water, and you would not be in violation of anybody’s water rights,” he says. “This was a serious problem everybody recognized.”
Brown says Nebraska’s hundreds of thousands of groundwater wells place the state second to Texas in the amount of groundwater used.
“Early in the negotiations, the idea came forth that Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska would all contribute water to go to the species habitat,” says Brown. “People were saying that wouldn’t happen because Nebraska pumps so much right next to the river that all that water is basically being sucked out of the river. The cooperative agreement of 1997 required Nebraska to figure out a way to deal with that.”
The prevailing hope was that the cooperative agreement would only take about three years to formulate, but there were challenges at hand that stymied the process. “Part of the reason it took nine years was Nebraska had to go through a legal revolution in the way it manages its water,” Brown says.
That changed three years ago with Nebraska’s legislators passing a set of laws that integrated groundwater and surface-water management in a process Brown describes as “contentious.” “They also put in place studies and regulations that basically indicated which of Nebraska’s basins were underutilized, fully appropriated, or over-appropriated, and where they are fully appropriated, new development would not be permitted unless it is offset by reducing historic use of the water,” he says. “Where it is over-appropriated, the water use was going to be reduced.”
Nebraska continues to struggle with the issue, Brown notes. “If I had to put my finger on the biggest institutional and political change that occurred that allowed this [habitat restoration] program to be put in place, that is what it is. It took a number of very courageous people to do that,” he adds.
Nebraska is the same as Wyoming, says Brown, “but what makes Nebraska interesting is that groundwater use for agriculture far outstrips surface water, although in the Platte River Basin there’s a lot of surface irrigation, too. People are using both of those sources, and that is why integration was so important. That use is fairly stable; there’s not an increasing demand.”
Brown finds it interesting that most of the major cities in Nebraska are located along the Platte River and use Platte River water or groundwater, “and they’ve had to rely more on the Platte as there have been contamination problems with well fields further away from the river, largely from agricultural runoff and chemicals. They have moved their well fields closer into the river, and it’s become more of a critical resource for them.”
The Lake McConaughy Environmental Account is taking a small percent of the inflows into Lake McConaughy and putting them into an account that holds up to about 100,000 acre-feet that would be used to move water downstream. “Those are the three big pieces, and then the governance committee would put together a water action plan that has smaller pieces, and they all together improve the flows to the central Platte by roughly 150,000 acres,” says Brown.
In Colorado, Urban Demand Dominates
Water usage varies from state to state, Brown notes. Each state will contribute a different project to the program. Of the up to 150,000-acre flow improvement for the targeted habitats desired, some 80,000 of it are being contributed by three projects by the participating states. The remaining 50,000 to 70,000 would come from other projects the program would develop over the first incremental stage.
“Colorado is a bit of the anomaly,” says Brown. “While there is a lot of irrigated agriculture down the South Platte River in Colorado, the growing demand in Colorado is for urban water use. That makes it different than Wyoming and Nebraska, because there’s a major sector that is growing and will probably accelerate in growth.”
Colorado will provide the Tamarack project, retiming 10,000 acre-feet of flows in the South Platte near the Tamarack Ranch State Wildlife Refuge to help improve flow timings in the habitat area in Nebraska to create a more beneficial environment for the species. Colorado had to find a way to characterize how changing patterns of water use in the South Platte Basin were affecting the flow of the South Platte, says Brown.
In coming up with a model to do so, the state identified the sources of all the water use in the South Platte Basin. The state developed a model linking all of the sources to which each of those sectors supplied water. “As you shift from agricultural to urban water use, two basic things happen,” notes Brown. “You get more water in the river because the consumptive use on the urban side is significantly less than the consumptive use for the agriculture side, so on a net basis, for every acre-foot you allocate moved from irrigated agriculture to urban, you actually end up with more return flows into the river.
“That’s a good thing for getting more water down the river to Nebraska for the program, but it also changes the timing of the flows more, and timing actually makes a big difference for the species.”
Colorado developed a tracking system from which grew an approach to take water during the fall and winter months out of the South Platte near the state line with Nebraska and put it into recharge ponds, says Brown. “That recharge comes back through the alluvium into the river, and by designing how far away the ponds are, you can significantly retime the flow in the river to get it to the habitat in Nebraska at the right time,” he says.
Wyoming’s Water Storage Plan
As for Wyoming, its water use is fairly steady, with 90% mainly irrigated agriculture, Brown says. Wyoming will provide the Pathfinder Modification Project, a proposal to raise by a few feet the spillway at Pathfinder Reservoir, a federal reclamation facility. That will capture about 50,000 acre-feet of storage that has been lost over the years to sedimentation in the reservoir. Some of the stored water would be allocated to the program by being moved down the river to Lake McConaughy to be used to maintain flows.
In addition to each state’s water contribution, the program includes money to improve water efficiency by getting more water into the system, including additional storage. Farmers and other water users will most likely be affected by the program to the extent they choose to temporarily lease water to the program in such a way that would be economically advantageous to them to do so. Land could be sold or easements leased or sold for habitat restoration for the same economic advantage. That could potentially reduce 11 million irrigated acres by 6,000 to 17,000 farmed acres in the three states, resulting in an estimated $4 million to $5 million reduction in annual gross crop revenues in the basin.
A negative economic impact could be realized through reductions in crop productions from voluntary water leasing, affecting related agricultural services and supplies. Another impact would be a reduction in recreational activities, such as fishing. Together, positive and negative economic impacts are expected to amount to less than 0.1% of the local economy. The land aspect of the program entails acquiring, protecting, and restoring 10,000 acres on a 100-mile reach between Lexington and Chapman. Brown says almost 3,000 acres have been identified and bought by Nebraska power districts.
“What the program will need to do in the next 13 years of the first increment of the program is acquire about 7,000 additional acres of land along the river, through purchase, lease, or easements,” he says.
The area being restored used to be the historic riverbed before the flows were significantly reduced. “Now it’s become filled with trees and vegetation. That isn’t prime agriculture land because it is all sand,” Brown says. “It does tend to get a lot of use from recreation and duck hunters. There is potential that easements could be acquired with various landowners to allow use for restoration of habitat.”
Trees and vegetation that has grown over the old riverbed could be cleared and in doing so open up the river in areas to have it more like it used to be, which was very broad, unvegetated, and with a lot of sandbars, Brown says. The other part of the land aspect is to restore wet meadows. “All along the central Platte used to be what we call wet meadow complexes: a mosaic of no trees, low-lying grasslands, swales, and some sort of linear wetland features,” says Brown. “The river historically moves back and forth across the valley and has left tracks. Those tracks are where wet meadow areas tend to be, which are very productive for the bird species.”
Lawson notes there is a need for federal legislation in the process that will authorize the US secretary of interior to participate in the program as to seek appropriations that would be used to acquire lands and water as well as support the monitoring aspect and the program’s executive director.
“Although legislation had been introduced in the last Congress, there hadn’t been sufficient time for it to get through committee, so it will need to be reintroduced,” Lawson says. “The legislation would provide for an adjustment in inflation as well, so once it is in place, we fully recognize as we move down the years that $157 million or so that the federal government is talking about contributing over the 13-year period will actually be more than that, and we have to have that ceiling increased on a year-by-year inflationary basis.”
Putting Words Into Action … One Step at a Time
The program will be implemented in phases, with each phase being reviewed through an adaptive management framework to measure progress to improve techniques for the next phase. “That will provide us flexibility,” says Lawson. “We know what our ultimate goal is, but as we move along we can be flexible on how we get there.”
Implementation will encompass significant monitoring and research to ensure the program’s effectiveness in accomplishing the goal for the targeted species, Lawson notes. “In the first five years, we hope to have acquired all of the lands, because if you don’t have the lands acquired, the water is useful but the water is in combination with the land to be able to form that habitat,” says Lawson.
The governance committee’s members hope to achieve the goal of 130,000 to 150,000 acre-feet of water flow improvement within the first 10 years of the program, “so by the time we get to the last two or three years of the first increment, we have all of the resources in place so we can be evaluating it,” he adds.
“That would give us the information on how to proceed with any increments after that. We’re not trying to speculate what the increment after that might be because that’s the whole idea of having this adaptive management approach and research and monitoring approach,” says Lawson. “We may find we need more or less or continue to do what we are doing.”
Lawson notes the habitat restoration program is an immense undertaking. “Anytime you’re talking about a program that’s going to take a period of 13 years to get it in place and implemented and has a value in excess of $317 million, that is a substantial program,” he says.