March 1, 2017 at 5:00 PM - Water Committee Meeting

No unfinished business from last Water Committee.

The District received a letter, signed by Keith Rohwer and David Woita, relinquishing variance LPN-V-013-0312 for 100 acres approved at the October 2016 Board meeting. The approved acres in the Hydrologically Connected Area for 2017 is now 2389.52. The Board has the authority to approve up to 2500 per year. Attached is the submitted letter from Mr. Rohwer and Mr. Woita as well as the HCA spreadsheet from the October Board meeting. 

No new updates.

Martin Erickson is asking the Water Committee to review the variance condition regarding the size of the monitoring well that is to be drilled on the northwest boundary of the field. Staff recommends a 4" well to allow adequate room for a dedicated sampling pump as well as a data logger. Mr. Erickson would like to have a 2" well drilled instead of the 4". The well will be approximately 220' and the cost is $6.50/ft for a 2" well and $15.00/ft for a 4" well. This results in a cost savings of ~$1,870 for Mr. Erickson.

Due to the variable water quality that is present in the Dakota aquifer, staff feels that a 4 inch diameter well is required in order to allow proper monitoring of the water quality and quantity in the aquifer.  The diameter of a dedicated pump is at least 1.5 inches leaving little room for water flow around the pump itself.  In addition the diameter of the connecting cables needs to be taken into account, to again allow adequate water flow within the pump casing of the monitoring well.

The Committee members discussed this and took no action to modify the variance condition for a 4 inch diameter monitoring well. 

Accidental change. See Board meeting agenda for well permit breakdown.

David Rasmussen is requesting a new well to irrigate 0 new acres in the SW 1/4 of the SW 1/4, Section 7, T20N, R4W, Upper Newman Grove Subarea, Platte County. The ground was previously irrigated from well G-148938, but due to a family discrepancy, he can no longer irrigate the 62.4 certified irrigated acres with this well.  Attached is the well log from G-148938 as well as a map of the field in question.

Butler Saunders SQS Area (SQS #1)

There are 30 irrigation wells in this area.  25 of these have a flow meter; the other five wells were not used in 2016.  All 25 flow meter reporting forms have been returned.  Angle has completed the allocation calculations for these wells.  2017 will be the third year of their allocation for this SQS area.

Platte-Colfax SQS Area (SQS #2)

Flow meter cost-share applications continue to be received.  Flow meter reporting forms are also being returned – reports for about 30 registered irrigation wells are yet to be received.  Reporting deadline was November 1, 2016.  Staff is working on allocation calculations.

No new updates.

Staff met with Amy Zoller of DNR on February 23, 2017 and discussed our V-IMP between our two agencies. LPNNRD would like to move forward with our plan and no longer wait on possible changes involving the Lower Platte River Basin Coalition (LPRBC).  These changes (such as water transfers) will be incorporated into our V-IMP at a later date.  Since our V-IMP will only cover the hydrologically connected portions of our District, this V-IMP will be a subset of the District wide GWMA.

Some changes were made to the current V-IMP plan and these will be taken back to DNR for further review.

A couple of requests have been received for 2017.  Kits will be mailed out prior to the irrigation season.

For our meter maintenance program via our contract we are responsible for providing the cable and crimper tools that are needed to make sure the meters are not tampered with. In order for this to happen we need the steel stainless twist sealing cable, 5 crimper tools, the lead seals, and also the die engravers that are used in the crimpers to stamp on the lead seals. The crimper tool will engrave the LPN logo and year it was inspected with the engraved dies. We contacted McCrometer for the order and the order has been placed. The total price for these items is $1562.10. Since we are inspecting a 1/4 of the meters per year we will need to purchase 4 more die engraved seals in 2021. The die engraved seals that were purchased on this order are for the years of 2017-2020. 

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The contract between the LPNNRD and Tri-Cities Meter Inc. has been sent to our contractor for their review (see attached contract).

Mark Luchsinger has submitted a flow meter cost share application for improvements to his 2005 flow meter to bring it up to LPNNRD approved flow meter requirements.  He installed anti-reverse, changed units on the register from gallons to acre inches, etc. for a total cost of $538.50.

Points of discussion:

- Water comm. currently cost-share on flow meters previously installed.  This meter was installed in 2005 so we could pay him $770 which is from the WSF.

- Pay him 60% of $538.50 or $323.10 (which is from WSF).

- If part of our FMMP, cost of parts are to be paid by producer.  LPNNRD share would be for site visit and labor by Tri-City meters, but contract not signed yet.  Therefore $0 to Mr. Luchsinger.

After some discussion the Committee members felt that Mr. Luchsinger showed a good faith effort in upgrading his existing flow meter at a lower cost of $538.50 when purchase of a new flow meter would have cost $770 in cost share funds.

A second mailing was sent to producers in January to encourage them to take advantage of this cost-share program.  We have had a little up-tick in the number of applications received as a result.

As of February 28, 2017 we have received a total of 175 applications.  Several of these still need to be inspected to insure that the meter is installed properly.  

Seven well sites have applied for 2 meters each, but following motion of the Water Committee, only one meter per irrigation system will receive funding.

Therefore, for the March 13, 2017 Board Meeting, we will have a total of 8 cost-share applications to approve.

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Staff plan to send in our first reimbursement request for our Flow Meter cost share grant to the WSF later this week.  The request will be for $96,226.

We have seven applications that were recently received (which still need processing) and all of these are 8 inch meters.  If later approved this would make the running total for our WSF grant with ~$76,400 remaining. Staff recommends opening this up the SQS #1 producers.  We will need to go back to the WSF to get their approval.

Letters and cost share forms were sent to the nine producers (on 12 irrigation wells) who have not yet installed flow meters (see attached list).  As of March 1, 2017 one of these people has applied for cost share, Lawrence Kasik.  Cease & Desist action should be considered on the other individuals and whether or not we want to impose an acre inch penalty for not installing a flow meter last irrigation season.

The average water use in SQS #2 was around 4.5 to 5 acre inches during the summer of 2016.  Committee members discussed imposing a water use allocation penalty of 9 acre inches on those producers who failed to install flow meters.

2016 is the fourteenth year for this Phase 2 Area.  Phase 2 information packets with order were mailed to producers in June, before the start of irrigation.

This area was reduced from 32 sections to 21 sections in 2015.

129 Annual Fertilizer Application Reports for 2016 have been received.  Both Mike Ebel and Daryl Finecy have turned in reports.  Oaklund spoke to Finecy regarding reports for section 13.  Finecy said that he didn’t farm these tracts in 2016 as the owner, Stuart Gerhold, had a different tenant.  Oaklund spoke with Gerhold on Friday and mailed the Phase 2 information to the tenant, Matt Mimick, on Monday after speaking with him on the phone.

2016 is the first year of this Phase 2 Area.  There are 45 registered active irrigation wells in the ten sections of this new area.

57 Annual Fertilizer Application Reports for 2016 have been received.  Still awaiting reports from Chuck Emanuel, Brian Goff, and Mark Horejsi.  Reporting deadline was December 31st.

2016 is the first year of this Phase 3 Area.  This Phase 3 area went into effect September 1, 2015.  The 55 sections of this area first went into a Phase 2 Area in 2004.  

399 Annual Fertilizer Application Reports have been received.  Reports from Dan Zoucha, Leander Rerucka, and Chad Sukstorf were received in February.  Mark Horejsi still has not sent in his reports; he has reports for both of these Phase 2 areas.  Report deadline is December 31st.  

Online testings in February:

2017 Certification Classes for Nitrogen and Water Management

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      316 letters with class schedule for those expiring 4/1/2017 were mailed in December.

      84 letters with class schedule for those that expired 4/1/2016 were mailed in December.

      88 letters with class schedule for those that expired 4/1/2015 were mailed in December.

      320 reminder letters for the March classes were mailed in February, after Lindsay class.

The final summary report for 2016 is attached. Also attached is a chemigation procedural guideline that will help out to follow and be our standard operating procedure. There are different scenarios that are presented in the field when meeting and inspecting the permits with the certified applicators. This guideline is also attached. 

The LPNNRD has received no new livestock permit applications from DEQ since the last Water Committee meeting.

No wells have been plugged, reviewed, or ready for cost share payment approval this month.

Attached is our Annual membership in ENWRA.  

Attached is the latest Geo-Cloud contract with ENWRA.  ENWRA obtained a grant from the WSF to fund the majority of money for the Geo-Cloud program.  This will take all the AEM data collected in the State, C&SD test hole data, registered well logs of selected high capacity wells, NRD's ground water energy level measurements, and MODFLOW software to model the aquifers in selected areas of Nebraska.

Denmark has already developed software to perform these mapping capabilities (called Geo-Scenes) and this project will now be designed to also work in Nebraska.  Part of this program will allow the general public to create maps as well.

The latest meeting of the Lower Platte River Consortium met at LPSNRD on February 23, 2017.  Agenda and minutes of the last meeting are attached.  The next steps are to submit a work plan to the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) in February, an annual report to WSF, and obtaining property access for the instrumentation of river sites during the Spring of this year.  The proposed monitoring sites are on the attached map.

Staff will begin the Spring readings from our GWEL network later this month.

482 water use reports were sent out on 2/23/2017. Staff is recommending that all permits and variances that were approved prior to May 8th 2008 be excluded from future water use report mailings if they were only reporting the hours that the well was on. This makes up 43 of the 703 total reports. Also, efforts are being made to bring well permits and variances that have not installed a flow meter into compliance.