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2nd article of 4 from Flatwater Free Press

OUR DIRTY WATER

Farmer Jason Othmer operates a combine as he harvests corn near Vesta, an unincorporated community in Johnson County in southeast Nebraska on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022. Photo by Ryan Soderlin for the Flatwater Free Press

OUR DIRTY WATER

No nitrate police: State and local regulators can’t, or won’t, stop our drinking water from getting worse

There are few staff to monitor Nebraska’s vast swaths of farmland, thousands of cattle feedlots, large hog operations and chicken farms. And the agencies’ own regulations don’t give the staff many tools to combat malpractice.

The farmer was growing impatient. He folded his arms. Shook his head angrily. 

He and dozens of other central Nebraska farmers had gathered for mandatory training in Columbus a few weeks before Christmas last year. In response to stubbornly high nitrate levels, the Lower Loup Natural Resources District had designated a slice of the region a “Phase 3 area.” That designation led to a few new requirements – like this training to help farmers manage their nitrogen fertilizer use and reduce nitrate leaching.

The farmer didn’t like this. He told NRD leaders that he had been drinking water containing nitrate at 40 parts per million – quadruple the safe drinking water standard – all his adult life. He was fine, he told them. 

During the morning session, he stormed out.

“I’m gonna go pollute the water,” he told the NRD’s assistant manager, Tylr Naprstek, right before he left, Naprstek recalled.

There was precious little Naprstek could do.

He couldn’t fine the farmer. He couldn’t send a cease and desist letter. He couldn’t issue a written or verbal warning. He couldn’t do much except mandate this training. And ask nicely.

“We can try to educate, and as long as he stays within the boundaries of our rules and regs, that’s really all we can do,” said Naprstek.

Even as Nebraska’s water grows increasingly laced with nitrate – a reality that deeply worries the experts studying links between elevated nitrate and pediatric cancers – the regulators meant to keep our water clean either can’t, or won’t, do much to stop practices known to cause nitrate levels to spike.

Local NRDs and the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy have few staff to monitor Nebraska’s vast swaths of farmland, thousands of cattle feedlots, large hog operations and chicken farms. And even when they identify malpractice, the agencies’ own regulations don’t give the staff many tools to combat it, multiple NRD leaders said.

NRDs can place restrictions on when farmers can apply nitrogen fertilizer. They can mandate water testing and nitrate analysis. They can even hold mandatory training sessions like the one the Columbus farmer stormed out of. 

But, crucially, they can’t stop a farmer from applying far more nitrogen fertilizer than is needed – fertilizer that can seep as nitrate into the water supply. Their managers can find themselves hamstrung by their own boards, which sometimes fight against the enforcement of rules that the board itself has previously approved and enacted, according to meeting minutes, interviews and emails obtained by the Flatwater Free Press under public records laws. 

The Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy, charged with keeping cattle feedlots from polluting our water supply, can take years to react to feedlots showing sky-high nitrate levels. And even when they do, these regulators often take little action – even as they continue to hand out new feedlot permits “like Halloween candy,” wrote Mike Sousek, Lower Elkhorn NRD General Manager in an email he sent to every NRD leader in Nebraska. 

Many farmers use their nitrogen fertilizer responsibly, both state and local leaders stress. They apply it using methods that leach fewer nitrates into our water supply. They take into account nitrogen already in the soil. They embrace technologies and best practices championed by the University of Nebraska, and they save money by using their nitrogen fertilizer more efficiently.

They are the agricultural equivalent of drivers, buckled into their seats, driving comfortably near the speed limit.

But, in Nebraska, there’s little way to enforce rules already in place, rules meant to protect our groundwater.

There’s no one to stop the other driver, the one barreling 90 miles per hour down the highway, crossing the centerline, putting everyone on the road in danger.

“There’s no nitrogen police,” Sousek said.

***

For a glance at how Nebraska’s enforcement can be slow and toothless, look at Engelmeyer Farms.

The West Point feeder cattle and hog facility has had high nitrate in some of its downstream wells since 2007. No one drinks from these wells, but sky-high readings are evidence that nitrate is leaching into the water supply. 

In 2011, nitrate readings peaked at an astronomical 413 parts per million.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s safe drinking limit for nitrate is 10 parts per million. 

Only in August – fifteen years after the initial high readings – did the NDEE conduct a “compliance status inspection” of Engelmeyer Farms because of high nitrate, according to the state’s available public records.

Three prior, more general inspections found the feedlot owner failed to provide proof that they properly inspected waste or manure application tools. Despite the high levels – some of the highest ever recorded in Nebraska – the state’s only guidance was that Engelmeyer Farms needed better record-keeping.

The NDEE’s enforcement at Engelmeyer Farms actually exceeds the work that the department does at other feedlots with high nitrate levels, according to public records.

Five feedlots near Wisner frequently reported far higher nitrate levels than their surroundings in the past 10 years, a Flatwater Free Press review of Wisner area livestock facilities with monitoring data available showed. 

Inspectors sometimes noted concerns during visits to these feedlots. 

On all five of these feedlots, the department’s groundwater section recommended nothing beyond continued monitoring.

There are 2,600-some active permits for concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, in the state. Most are cattle feedlots, large hog operations or chicken farms.

Only 367 have been required to install monitoring wells and report water quality results, according to a list provided by state regulators in April.

Four or five staff members in the groundwater section – who have many other duties – are also tasked with reviewing the tests these CAFOs submit twice a year, said NDEE Groundwater Section Supervisor David Miesbach.

“I see it all the time. If I got alarmed by every time I saw something over 10 ppm, it would be a tough day,” said Miesbach.

Miesbach defended the department’s work, saying he and a small staff work with livestock operations diligently, identifying the worst cases, trying to determine where the nitrate is coming from and experimenting with numerous ways to bring levels down. 

The department does regulate manure runoff. However, once the manure is applied to farm fields, it becomes local NRDs’ responsibility, NDEE leaders said. 

Livestock operations have planted trees and built new waste lagoons to try to improve water quality, he said. 

Some of these measures could cost the owners millions of dollars, Miesbach explained. The high cost is one reason the state needs to thoroughly study the site before asking owners to change, he said.

The Flatwater Free Press requested the total number of CAFOs that state regulators have worked with, as well as the total number of livestock producers known to have nitrate issues.

The NDEE didn’t provide a list of livestock facilities it has worked with to address high nitrate. Miesbach said he couldn’t detail when the NDEE will fully determine the causes of high nitrate in livestock facilities with high readings, or how long it will take to address those problems. 

The Flatwater Free Press also made a public records request for five years of emails from roughly 80 department employees that mentioned the keywords, “nitrate,” “nitrogen,” “nutrient” and “fertilizer.”

The department quoted the newsroom $44,103.11 to obtain those public records.

This week, the Flatwater Free Press sued the NDEE, claiming the department offered a “legally insufficient and invalid estimate” for those public records. 

A grain cart waits to be loaded as farmer Jason Othmer harvests corn near Vesta, an unincorporated community in Johnson County in southeast Nebraska on Oct. 18. Othmer and many Nebraska farmers voluntarily take steps to use less fertilizer than farmers of previous eras did. But others often use way more fertilizer than is recommended by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which allows more harmful nitrate to leach into the groundwater. For a variety of reasons, regulators either can’t or won’t stop them. “There’s no nitrogen police,” said Mike Sousek, general manager of the Lower Elkhorn Natural Resources District. Photo by Ryan Soderlin for the Flatwater Free Press
Water resources technicians Josh Schnitzler, left, and Connor Baldwin, right, and assistant general manager Brian Bruckner, center, who all work for the Lower Elkhorn Resources District in Norfolk, test the water in a monitoring well near the north fork of the Elkhorn River. These wells, located roughly 10 miles northwest of Elkhorn, are used to monitor ground water for nitrates and other substances like solids and sulfates. Photo by Ryan Soderlin for the Flatwater Free Press

To Jim Bendfeldt, a longtime farmer near Kearney, there’s nothing more refreshing than drinking cool water his irrigation wells pump in the summer. His family members often cup their hands and scoop water flowing from the irrigation pipes in his fields. 

But he won’t let his grandchildren have more than a few gulps, because some of his irrigation wells are high in nitrate. 

Slightly less than a quarter of all the Central Platte NRD’s certified irrigated acres – that’s some 225,000 acres – have average nitrate levels that exceed 15 parts per million, 150% the federal safe drinking water standard.

In the past four years, farmers in this area have self-reported using much more nitrogen fertilizer than UNL recommended – on average, 22% more, according to a Flatwater Free Press analysis of data obtained in a public records request. 

Some local regulators believe that these self-reported figures are low. Bendfeldt, also an NRD board member, said sales records would show that farmers in the area are using even more. The NRD has no authority to ask for these sales records or identify who’s overapplying nitrate.

“We have no authority to do anything other than accept the online records … and take each producer (at their) word,” he said.

Many farmers and agricultural interest groups cast the nitrate problem as a legacy issue that stems from past practices. They argue that golf courses and lawns are to blame. At NRD board meetings, they protest that more studies are necessary before regulators institute rules that restrict how they farm. They say authorities need to tailor regulations and account for weather, geology and other factors.

“I think there can’t be just a flat standard,” said Nebraska Farm Bureau President Mark McHargue. “We have to base it on science all the way through, so that involves, what types of crops you’re growing, what’s your rotation, what your rainfall is, what your slope on the soil is, what your organic matter is in your soil.”

But the science shows that most nitrates in our water come from fertilizer applied to crops. Years of results from these “nitrate fingerprinting” tests in multiple NRDs point to commercial fertilizers as the most common culprit. The bulk of these fertilizers are applied to corn, said multiple NRD leaders. 

Data requested by the Flatwater Free Press shows that farmers in many parts of Nebraska continue to put on more fertilizer than UNL recommends – even though critics say that the UNL recommendations are focused on yield, and should be lower if the damage to our water supply is taken into account. 

The free market can help, some argue. Farmers have no incentive to overapply nitrogen, particularly with fertilizer prices so high.

“If farmers blindly apply nitrogen without knowing what’s in the soil or what’s in their manure or what their crop needs are, they’re literally throwing money out the window, and they’re not going to do that,” said Andy Scholting, the founder of Nutrient Advisors, a consultant to both livestock and crop producers.

But an entire industry is built around encouraging Nebraska farmers to use more fertilizer, argues Ronda Rich, an Upper Big Blue NRD board member. 

Agronomists are often paid on yield, she said. People who sell fertilizer also advise farmers on how much fertilizer to buy. 

Armed with few tools, local regulators can’t do much to combat this, she said. 

Yet the regulators themselves are far from blameless, said Tim Gragert, a Republican state senator from Creighton. Gragert once worked for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which helps farmers with soil health. He sits on the Legislature’s Natural Resources Committee, and authored new laws, one that created a task force that studied nitrate and another that strengthened nitrate education. 

He doesn’t mince words on Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts.

“They’ve already been given that authority to do what they need to do. They’re not doing it,” he said.

***

In late 2020, staff in the Lower Elkhorn NRD proposed that an area should be elevated to Phase 2 in parts of Cuming, Colfax and Dodge counties, subjecting the area to heightened regulations to control nitrate leaching. 

They did so after nitrate levels had met the threshold laid out in the district’s own rules – rules the elected NRD board had previously approved. 

But the board decided not to go along with its own rules. It tabled the motion to go to Phase 2 – which would have imposed more regulations, including a ban on fall and winter application of nitrogen fertilizer, an 80-pound maximum of nitrogen fertilizer per single application, and mandatory soil and water sampling. Instead, it voted to conduct more testing. 

“We seem to want to just kick this can down the road to just study,” Sousek said at the board’s September meeting. “We’ve had this in place in Pierce County for 20 years and we’re still studying, and the problems aren’t getting any better. ”

After a long pause, he continued: “If we aren’t gonna follow our own rules, maybe we need to change our rules.”

Lower Elkhorn Natural Resources District staff proposed a groundwater management area in 2020 after the median nitrate levels in 460 square miles of Cuming, Dodge and Colfax counties hit the district’s threshold for Phase 2 — at least 20% of the monitored wells have nitrate concentrations between 5 and 9 parts per million. The designation would have subjected the area to heightened regulations such as a ban on fall and winter application of nitrogen fertilizer. The NRD’s board declined to go to Phase 2, and instead voted to conduct more study. (Data: Lower Elkhorn NRD/Map: Hanscom Park Studio)

This sort of tension isn’t uncommon. Leaders of natural resources districts – local government units created by the state to protect natural resources – often find themselves being slowed down or opposed by board members, who are locally elected, when the leaders try to enforce rules related to water quality.

At the same meeting, Matt Steffen, a board member from West Point, argued that the rules should differentiate different soil types and the board should wait for the test results to come in. “This information is going to greatly help people understand.”

Mark Hall, the chair of the board, agreed that it’s best to wait for more study.

“We’re talking about what I would consider maybe a 70-year-old problem, and we’re going to make a decision within one year to affect the whole area. I would rather be a little conservative and make sure we understand the science before we make a change,” he told the Flatwater Free Press.

That inaction frustrates both NRD staffers and board members who favor regulation, who argue that their own test results have shown nitrate levels are getting higher – and that they likely affect area residents’ health. For example: Nebraska has the highest pediatric cancer rate west of Pennsylvania, and many of these cancers, researchers say, are linked to high nitrate levels.

Board member Joel Hansen urged the full board to at least vote on creating the Phase 2 area.

“The board’s making the decision not to follow our own rules by not doing anything,” Hansen said in an interview.

But being a board member who favors regulation is often a good way to lose your board seat.

In the November election, Hansen was defeated by Plainview farmer Jim Aschoff, who was once issued a cease and desist order for failing to submit an annual report on his fertilizer use, yield goal and his land’s water quality.

What happened in Lower Elkhorn NRD isn’t an isolated case. 

In 2019, a board committee of the Upper Big Blue NRD discussed introducing a rule to ban the application of anhydrous ammonia, a nitrogen fertilizer, in the fall in areas where median nitrate level reaches a threshold. The committee then voted to not move forward with this rule change. 

Later that year, the board proposed another rule to require split application, a method of applying fertilizer to reduce the amount of nitrate that seeps into the water. Another proposed rule would have capped the amount of fertilizer that can be applied in certain areas before April 1.

More than a dozen residents, mostly farmers, spoke at the public meeting to oppose the rules or ask for additional studies. The board then voted to remove the proposed changes.

Three years after the board scrapped these rule changes, nitrate levels have spiked. Eight of the district’s 12 zones had an increase in median nitrate levels. In three of these zones, at least half of the sampled private wells — which provide drinking water to rural residents — now have nitrate levels higher than the 10 ppm safe drinking water limit, according to the NRD’s most recent test results.

In many areas, median nitrate levels in Upper Big Blue NRD have trended up between 2019 and 2022. (Data: Upper Big Blue NRD / Maps: Hanscom Park Studio)


The NRD Phase System, Explained

Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts commonly create phase areas to address high nitrate. Each NRD sets their own rules and thresholds for these different phases, but all have trouble enforcing the requirements these phases are meant to trigger.

Phase 1:  Areas that have the lowest levels of nitrate. Usually no reporting or other requirements, depending on the NRD. Some NRDs require training and groundwater analysis for nitrate at this level.

Phase 2: “Special management practices” typically start here. They sometimes include bans on commercial fertilizer application in the fall and winter, because applying fertilizer then is more likely to cause nitrate leaching into the water supply.

Phase 3: Additional requirements are sometimes put into place. In Phase 3, some NRDs try to discourage the use of anhydrous ammonia by requiring that farmers also use an inhibitor chemical that helps stop this type of fertilizer from leaching nitrate into the soil. Some NRDs require split application, which limits the amount of nitrogen fertilizer at any one time.

Phase 4: Only certain NRDs even have a Phase 4 on the books – a phase actually meant to limit the amount of fertilizer that can be used.

But no NRD has ever designated any area Phase 4, NRD leaders said.

Central Platte NRD General Manager Lyndon Vogt said there probably should be some areas in this phase. “If we were to go to a Phase 4, we don’t have the ability to enforce that,” Vogt said. “I think everyone’s struggling with what that next step is.”

Self-reported data from the district shows farmers on average have applied more than the UNL recommended level of nitrogen fertilizers in the past four years.

Rich, the Upper Big Blue NRD member, said her board, packed with members with tight connections to agriculture, has failed its duties in educating the public about the threat of nitrate. 

Some board members actively seek to hamstring efforts to strengthen regulations, she said. Some board members repeatedly vote no on issuing cease and desist orders to farmers who fail to comply with the district’s rules – even though those rules, like reporting your nitrogen fertilizer use, don’t even carry penalties even if the farmer’s fertilizer use is sky-high. 

Rich lost her re-election in November, falling to a challenger who has two brothers already on the NRD board.

At the September board meeting, staff brought in a new University of Nebraska Medical Center study that shows geographic correlation between areas with high pediatric cancer and birth defect rates and areas with high nitrate levels, Rich recalled. The researchers used the NRD’s own data. 

The water committee’s chairman John Miller said, “There are some things in there that I personally am not sure are valid.” Miller then quickly ended the discussion on high nitrate and cancer. 

A network of consistently monitored wells in the Upper Big Blue district shows that, in the past decade, nine of the district’s 12 zones have seen nitrate levels increase.

***

Two of the wells that supply Wisner’s drinking water have been getting worse for years, and one veered into dangerous territory this year after its nitrate levels shot as high as 11 parts per million.

The town in northeast Nebraska’s Cuming County has issued multiple drinking water notices to its roughly 1,200 residents, and has been forced to provide bottled water to pregnant people, nursing mothers and infants under six months old.

In the meantime, a feedlot a few miles outside town has shown consistently high levels of nitrate in its water. Earlier this year, a monitoring well at the feedlot skyrocketed to 232 parts per million.

State regulators have inspected the feedlot twice since 2018. They have found no issues. They requested nothing from the feedlot’s owners.

In an interview in October, Miesbach confirmed that the monitoring data shows high nitrate, but said he hadn’t yet contacted the feedlot.

This northeast area of Nebraska is home to some 1,800 livestock facilities, the most of any region in the state. 

Fewer than 100 of these feedlots and other animal operations even have on-site monitoring wells, said Sousek, the NRD director in the area – meaning that state regulators are flying mostly blind. 

Sousek thinks these feedlots, regulated by the NDEE, have contributed to his district’s high nitrate in groundwater, he said in emails obtained by the Flatwater Free Press under public records law.

“On one hand (NDEE) is preaching to the NRD’s that we need to clean this mess up to meet standards, on the other hand they’re handing out permits like Halloween candy,” wrote Sousek in an email he sent to every NRD manager in Nebraska. 

The NRD itself has repeatedly stopped short of more aggressively regulating farmers’ use of nitrogen fertilizer.

It has only recently begun sending cease and desist orders to farmers when the farmers repeatedly failed to fill out crop reports. It has declined to bring lawsuits and levy fines against those who refuse to comply with these orders related to nitrate management, though Sousek noted that many farmers do comply after conversations with NRD staff members. 

And Sousek’s own board has repeatedly declined to increase regulations, even in areas where nitrate levels are spiking. 

As this continues, the water quality in many small Nebraska towns continues to move in one direction. 

South. 

Nine small towns in Sousek’s district have had at least one nitrate reading above 10 parts per million – the federal safe drinking water standard – since 2017. 

In emails obtained by the Flatwater Free Press, the NRD director sometimes sounds a sorrowful note. Like there’s little he and any other regulators can ultimately do. Like nothing will ever change. 

“The real legacy issue as I see is our resistance to change in what we consider best management practices, the legacy of doing what we have always done, the statement of…we are doing everything right,” Sousek wrote in an email sent to UNL researchers in February 2021. “We continue to add to the problem.”


This article was produced as a project for the University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2022 National Fellowship. 

Can we incentivize our way out of high nitrate levels?

There’s another way to get nitrate levels in our drinking water down in Nebraska, say some farmers and ag industry leaders.


Use the carrot, not the stick.

Tim Mundorf, the director of soil management at Central Valley Ag, a co-op headquartered in York, argues that more and better incentives can spur farmers to change practices that leach nitrate into the water. Roughly half his clients use at least one of the best management practices.

“We, as a society, need to be on board that we’re going to help the farmer bear some of those costs if we’re going to ask the farmer to change his practices,” Mundorf said. “Those incentives could be better. And I think some of that’s coming.”

Others argue that carrots might help, but only if accompanied by sticks.

Economic incentives alone won’t solve the problem, said Silvia Secchi, a professor at the University of Iowa who specializes in the economic impacts of agriculture.

“Our policies that essentially try to pay farmers to do the right thing are not very good at getting at the problems,“ said Secchi. “The system is set up to fail.”

When the incentives don’t work, some farmers’ behavior won’t change, because the farmer doesn’t solely bear the cost of unclean water.

“The consequences of that overapplication did not accrue to the farmers; they accrued to the rest of us in the pollution of groundwater and surface water,” Secchi said.

“Our Dirty Water” — A Flatwater Free Press

Our Dirty Water

Nebraska’s nitrate problem is growing worse. It’s likely harming our kids.

By Yanqi Xu

Flatwater Free Press

Standing in front of a big screen, Nick Herringer claps in time with a metronome. He draws lines on the screen, repeating patterns drawn by the computer. He identifies icons of cars when they flash before his eyes. This is the 22-year-old’s speech and cognitive therapy, which he has been doing at least twice a week. Every week. For three years.

Nick’s thick brown hair hides a massive, ear-to-ear scar from his four brain surgeries for glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer he has battled since he was a teenager. The lifelong Nebraska football fan had to quit playing football his freshman year at Hastings High School after his doctor told him: Your brain can’t withstand the hits.

His mom, Tammy Herringer, drives Nick to therapy and back to the quiet country home his dad Jay Herringer built for the family. She takes Nick along shopping and to community events because he can’t go alone after the cancer and a car accident that further damaged his brain.

“I have worn the paths back and forth to town all these years,” Tammy said.

Recently driving the gravel road from Hastings to their house northwest of town, she could barely peer beyond the endless rows of golden corn plants on both sides of the road, mile after mile, standing tall in the scorching sun.

This corn is the main crop of the number one industry in Nebraska. It’s a plant so important to the state that it’s in the name of Nick’s favorite team: The Cornhuskers. And it’s corn – what we spray onto it to make it thrive – that experts say may be the culprit behind many pediatric cancers like Nick’s.

Nitrogen fertilizer powers the corn’s growth. It also converts to nitrate as it seeps into the soil – right into the Herringers’ water and the drinking water of many Nebraskans.

This problem costs serious taxpayer money: Cities and small towns have spent untold millions of dollars treating the water they supply to their residents, struggling and sometimes failing to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water standard of 10 parts per million.

Fifty-nine of Nebraska’s 500-odd community public water systems have violated the EPA standard at least once since 2010. Those who live in the country and get their water from private wells, like the Herringers, continue to bear the cost of treating their own nitrate-laced water.

This problem is growing worse: The statewide median nitrate level has doubled since 1978. Despite this, state and local governments have taken little action to regulate the farming practices that lead to nitrate leaching, say experts and local officials from both parties.

These authorities have never fined or stopped someone who is using too much nitrogen fertilizer, multiple leaders of Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts told the Flatwater Free Press.

And this problem may have serious consequences for Nebraskans, including its youngest residents.

Nebraska has the seventh-highest pediatric cancer rate in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It has the highest pediatric cancer rate of any state west of Pennsylvania.

High nitrate levels are closely linked to colorectal cancer, according to a leading expert at the National Cancer Institute. They are connected to thyroid disease. They’re associated with neural tube defects, a birth defect of the brain or spine that often kills young children who have it.

Pregnant people can be potentially harmed by ingesting nitrates, experts say, spurring complications including anemia, premature labor and miscarriage.

And the risks may be increasing for Nebraskans, roughly 85% of whom use groundwater. Nearly one-fifth of Nebraska now has an estimated nitrate level above 5 parts per million. That’s the third highest in the United States.

Nick had drunk this water for years as a child. He has showered in it and eaten food cooked in it all his life.

That whole time, the Herringer family had no idea that their private well had tested at a nitrate level of 30 parts per million in 2010. That’s 10 times the amount of nitrate that Eleanor Rogan, a top University of Nebraska Medical Center researcher now examining the link between high nitrate and childhood cancers, says she would allow small children to drink.

The Herringer’s water was worse than 99% of the wells then tested in and around Hastings, a few years before the family got the grim news in 2015: Nick had cancer.

When Nick and Tammy recently arrived home from one of Nick’s fall speech therapy appointments, they bumped into well driller Eric Jensen. Jensen had just finished putting chlorine in their well. He told Tammy that high nitrate is common around Hastings, pointing to the nearby feedlot in Juanita and those cornfields that surround her house as culprits.

Drilling a new well won’t solve the problem, he said. There’s only one way to remove nitrate from their tap water, the well driller told the mother: Install a complex filtration system.

It’s about $1,000. But he said it’s worth it.

“Nitrate ain’t good,” he told Tammy.

***

Nick was perfectly healthy growing up. So Tammy thought it was strange when he asked to stay home from school because of a headache in 2015. Tylenol did little to help.

He started complaining about the sunlight being so bright that he had to wear sunglasses all the time. He vomited inside a Walgreens kiosk as Tammy printed photos. He vomited several times at home. His headache would come back after he stopped taking his nausea medication and steroids prescribed by the doctor. After seeing little improvement for about three weeks, Tammy drove him to the emergency room.

There, a doctor did a CT scan and showed them the results: an orange-sized mass on Nick’s brain. They wheeled him into an ambulance and rushed him to Omaha. The diagnosis: a grade 4 brain tumor, the most aggressive form of primary brain cancers. Most glioblastoma patients don’t survive 18 months, the doctors told Tammy.

Pediatric cancer cases like Nick’s are becoming more common in Nebraska, especially childhood brain tumors, according to a study led by UNMC and the state health department that found an increase in both between 1990 and 2013.

Areas of the state that have higher pediatric cancer rates and birth defect rates also have higher nitrate levels, researchers say.

“Over some time, we identified that there is something in Nebraska that’s a little bit different,” said Dr. Don Coulter, who participated in the statewide cancer study. “It’s the Ogallala Aquifer.”

Nebraskans’ water is often clear, cool and drawn directly from the aquifer. The 174,000-square-mile High Plains aquifer is the largest source of groundwater in the United States, a lifeline for cattle, corn and families.

But when there’s nitrate in their drinking water, Nebraskans can’t taste or smell it.

Nitrate exists naturally. It’s in vegetables. It’s converted from manure produced by cattle. But it can also come from manmade sources like commercial fertilizers applied to your lawn, your neighborhood golf course, and especially to crops that need nitrogen to grow.

Crops need nitrogen to grow. But the nitrogen fertilizers applied to cornfields can’t all be absorbed by the plants. In Nebraska, roughly a third of nitrogen applied to corn is lost to leaching, according to the Nebraska Water Center. Some of that goes into our water supply.

Our bodies easily absorb nitrate in water and convert it into nitrite, which then could morph into organic compounds called nitrosamines.

Nitrosamines can cause cancer.

A UNMC research team headed by Rogan is now looking county by county, examining links between high nitrate and the rates of the three most common pediatric cancers.

Nebraska counties with slightly elevated nitrate levels showed a seven-fold increase in the leukemia rate when compared to counties with minimal nitrate levels, the research suggests. These counties had lymphoma rates four times higher than counties with low levels. These findings are preliminary, scientists caution, and need further investigation.

But the cancer most consistently linked to elevated nitrate levels: Childhood brain cancers like Nick’s. These central nervous system cancers are eight times as high as in counties with low nitrate.

Nick’s family didn’t know of these risks. Most Nebraskans don’t, either.

The state’s well water is rarely tested. Excluding public water systems, less than 4% of the roughly 180,000 registered wells are tested each year. And private wells, found in rural areas and not connected to a community’s water supply, aren’t required by state or federal law to be tested at all.

The Herringer family actually got their water tested once, when Hastings Utilities decided to test some wells outside its city limits. The city then mailed out the testing results. The Herringers missed the letter.

The Herringers didn’t know that nitrate levels in Hastings were high. They didn’t know their own nitrate levels were much higher.

Tammy said they had recently heard things about a potential cancer belt along the corn belt. They heard about poor water quality. But they never put the two together.

“You don’t think that this is going to happen to you,” she said. “I’m not saying that that’s what caused Nicholas’s diagnosis…How will we ever know?”

***

State leaders have been concerned about the nitrate seeping into our water for half a century.

The state’s environmental agencies started testing nitrate in the 1970s.

In 1986, then-Sen. Loran Schmit, a Republican from the village of Bellwood, near Columbus, spearheaded a bill to address increasing nitrate. The resulting law called on state agencies and local natural resources districts to come up with a management plan for areas with high nitrate concentrations.

But experts told the Flatwater Free Press that the state has not done enough to turn the tide. In the decades since Schmit first focused on nitrate, the state has continued to approve bigger feedlots. Nebraska farmers have grown more and more corn.

“The bill was to prevent groundwater contamination, and I do not know we have made progress in that direction,” Schmit, a lifelong farmer who is now 94, told the Flatwater Free Press in an interview in September.

A few years after Schmit’s bill, the EPA took its first major action to limit nitrate in drinking water.

It did so because it had become clear, both to scientists and then to the public after blaring news headlines, that high nitrate in water causes something called methemoglobinemia.

Its common name: “Blue baby syndrome.”

Blue baby syndrome causes developmental delay. It causes babies’ hearts to fail. And, at the time, it was killing an unknown number of young American children.

To respond, the federal government, in 1992, enacted its first-ever rule for how much nitrate would be allowed in drinking water. Ten parts per million, the rule said, reflecting studies that appeared to show that blue baby syndrome didn’t happen if nitrate levels dropped below that limit. 

That limit hasn’t budged since. But decades of further study suggests that nitrate, even at levels below the EPA standard, is linked to potential health risks, including pediatric cancers, and birth defects.

Scientists are studying what these links mean.

They could mean that nitrate by itself causes cancer, or that it mobilizes other chemicals that lead to cancer. They could mean that nitrate becomes especially dangerous when mixed with other agrichemicals like atrazine or naturally occurring elements like uranium.

The mounting evidence that nitrate may be harmful is why Rogan believes water should contain less than 3 parts per million of nitrate before children drink it.

Some 48% of private wells were over Rogan’s suggested limit the last time they got tested, according to publicly available state water data.

“I think there’s just mounting evidence that the EPA standard for nitrate is too high,” she said. “I hope out of what we’re publishing and other people are publishing, that the acceptable standard is going to get lowered.”

Long before the first potential links between nitrate and cancer began to surface, Ila Foster let her two children drink from wells in Dundy County in southwest Nebraska.

After all, that’s what Foster grew up drinking. And what people nearby drank, no questions asked.

“I should have gotten my water checked down there,” she said. She never did.

Both Foster’s parents had colon cancer.

Then her 16-year-old daughter Nancy Mossburgh, who loved to garden, was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, an extremely rare form of aggressive cancer in her muscles.

Nancy died a year later in 1996.

Foster still owns the house where Nancy grew up. When she travels there, she brings bottled water.

“There’s no way I’m drinking that water out there,” she said.

Before any of their loved ones got cancer, her husband Loren Mossburgh, a farmer who raised cattle, wheat and milo, worried about agrichemicals. But her husband, who has since died, was unable to sway his fellow farmers.

“My husband, when he farmed out there, he got so upset with some of those people and he said ‘You know where those chemicals go to?’ He said our kids are gonna be paying for it.”

Water quality does play a pivotal role in community health, said Paul Black, former chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Poor water quality contributes to the failure of communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. The same goes for towns in the United States, he said.

“Nitrate is the key problem in Nebraska,” Black explained. “The kids are sicker so they don’t learn as well in school. So your community’s not as healthy because your kids now are having problems.”

Imagine looking at a map and zooming out so you can see the whole country, Black said. The chemical follows creeks and rivers all the way into the mighty Mississippi River and past New Orleans into the Gulf of Mexico.

Nebraska stands out on this map, Black said. It’s in red, a “hot zone.”

“I would say Nebraska is the epicenter in the upper Midwest.”

***

This spring, Tylr Naprstek, assistant manager of the Lower Loup Natural Resources District, waited his turn to speak to the NRD board in another district.

The meeting went long. Many of the white-haired farmers sitting in the audience left for home.

Finally it was Naprstek’s turn. He rose, stood at a lectern and described the reaction when an area north of Columbus was designated a management area in 2019 – after nitrate readings skyrocketed to as high as 48 parts per million.

“Everyone was pointing fingers,” he told the members of the Lower Elkhorn NRD board and the few remaining attendees. “This half of the room says, ‘Well it’s the manure guys over there that are doing it all,’ and …[feedlot owners were] saying ‘It’s the commercial fertilizer guys’.”

It’s the classic blame game, described to the Flatwater Free Press by multiple local officials, NRD board members and water quality experts.

Dan Snow, a lab director at the Nebraska Water Center, has a tool that can pinpoint who’s to blame.

It’s a process called “fingerprinting,” that allows Snow’s lab to measure the amount of nitrate and identify whether it’s coming from organic sources like manure, or commercial fertilizer.

Which means that, in the case of the 48-parts-per-million test near Columbus, Snow can tell you that the answer is, essentially, “all of the above.”

Manure from feedlots played a significant role. So did commercial fertilizer.

But that’s not the case across Nebraska.

Testing done by Snow’s lab consistently shows that the majority of nitrate comes from commercial fertilizers – what we spray on our lawns, golf courses, but most of all on corn.

“I’m guessing more than 90% [comes] from commercial fertilizer,” Snow told the Flatwater Free Press.

Some conditions make it more likely: shallow water tables, sandy soil texture and heavy irrigation, Snow explained.

Nebraska Farm Bureau President Mark McHargue knows that his hometown Central City fits this profile. The Platte River Valley, where his family is from, was the first in the state to observe the presence of high nitrate in their water a half-century ago.

“As farmers, we live in those communities. I have eight grandchildren. I want them to have good drinking water,” he said.

And the Nebraska Farm Bureau president points out that he and others have changed some farming practices to try to make that possible.

In the past few decades, his family farm has tested the nitrate in their soil. He factors in what’s already in the soil when calculating how much the crop needs.

His family also applies hog manure as a source of fertilizer in small amounts, a method known as “split application,” which reduces the amount of nitrate that seeps into the water. “Quite frankly, it’s a hassle. But we know in our sandy soils we can’t hold as much nitrogen,” he said.

Ray Ward runs a leading soil and water testing lab in Nebraska, and has been doing so for a long time – he founded the lab in Kearney 40 years ago.

When he started, some farmers used up to 350 pounds of nitrogen per acre to produce between 120 and 150 bushels of corn. That’s more than double UNL’s current recommended nitrogen-corn ratio.

“Farmers were pumping too much water and leaching the nitrate out,” Ward said. “And the corn had turned yellow, so they just put more nitrogen on the next year.”

Though the problem started decades ago, recent tests show an increase of nitrate in soils of large swaths of the state.

Snow hopes his “fingerprinting” findings will help Nebraska move beyond years of finger-pointing between farmers and feedlot owners to the next stage: finding solutions.

Snow’s study in the Hastings area – the area where the Herringers live – reveals that nitrate stored beneath irrigated cropland in that NRD increased by 30% between 2011 and 2016.

And Hastings manifests a bigger problem across Nebraska.

Statewide, contaminated areas with nitrate above the EPA standard have continued to expand since the 1970s, particularly in the eastern part of the state, according to two recent studies.

Public water systems in these areas, big and small, are hemorrhaging money to treat high nitrate.

Creighton, pop. 1,147 in Knox County, spent $1.3 million on building the state’s first reverse osmosis treatment system to filter out nitrate in 1993.

Seward, a city about half an hour west of Lincoln, spent $5 million.

Hastings spent $15 million on theirs.

To Norfolk Mayor Josh Moenning, Creighton’s response to rising nitrate levels felt like a “canary in the coal mine” moment.

“If we don’t get to some kind of solution here and get a handle on this problem, it’s only going to cost us more and more and into the future,” he said. “And it’s going to cost us in terms of negative health impacts.”

“We all have a role to play – rural community leaders and elected officials, too.”

***

A few months before Nick Herringer’s diagnosis, the Adams Central Patriots, the high school down the road from the Herringers’ home, played an away game against the Aurora Huskies. It was Childhood Cancer Awareness Night. Gary Peters, an Aurora father who lost his son Jacob to lymphoma in 2011, walked onto the field to read out one name after another. 

“Stand up if you knew Alyssa Sandmeier.”

“Stand up if you knew Tyler Larson.”

“Stand up if you knew Jacob Peters.”

“Stand up if you knew Sydnee Owens.”

By the end, almost everyone in the stadium was standing.

All were children. All, including Peters’ son Jacob, died of childhood cancer. To him, the seven pediatric cancer cases in Aurora from 2005 to 2013 seemed like a “waterfall” of different cancer diagnoses out of nowhere.

UNMC researchers have also found an association between pediatric cancer and atrazine, a herbicide that many farmers say they have already phased out. Rogan’s team is further expanding the studies to uranium and arsenic.

After seeing the UNMC research, Peters wondered if Jacob’s lymphoma and death were related to the water they consumed. They were on a private well. They used the water for cooking and showering.

A 2013 study identified a three-fold chance of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in areas where there was both high nitrate and atrazine. Noting “awfully suspicious” overlap between high atrazine and high pediatric cancer areas, Peters said he suspects a mix of different agrichemicals leads to pediatric cancers like his son’s.

He said lawmakers need to make people aware of this “silent battle.”

“How long is it gonna [take to] change, to get legislation that outlaws these chemicals that could give our kids cancer? There’s no definite time,” Peters said. “There’s just too many dollars involved. And the people making those decisions are only concerned about the bottom line. They’re not really concerned about kids getting cancer.”

He’s frustrated at the status quo. Policymakers have known about nitrate for more than 40 years. Little has changed.

Natural resources districts in the state, created 50 years ago for local management of water resources in each watershed, have been taking painstaking steps toward battling nitrate.

“It takes tough decisions,” said Mike Sousek, manager of the Lower Elkhorn NRD in the northeastern part of the state. He and his team have been encouraging farmers to adopt practices that benefit the environment, such as growing cover crops. Farmers can receive government funding for doing so.

“I got millions of dollars. I can’t even spend it. I can’t get people to sign up just to try to change [their practices],” he said. “Money isn’t enough of a carrot.”

The stick isn’t there either.

Then-Sen. Schmit designed a mechanism to protect groundwater safety – the state environmental protection authority and local NRDs should work together.

Neither the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy nor NRDs have issued a cease and desist order to or fined a single person for using too much nitrogen fertilizer or applying excessive manure in the state, NRD leaders said.

Regulators don’t even know how much nutrient gets applied to the ground, and how much remains in the soil.

***

Nick has fought vomiting and seizures with a sense of calmness.

“I prayed a lot,” he said.

Tammy said her son’s personality changed since his second surgery. She doesn’t hear his nonstop whistling anymore. He has become quieter. He’s more succinct.

Nick has tried taking college classes online, but he tires easily.

After almost a year of stable health while on oral chemotherapy, Nick recently learned his tumor has again grown. His family is exploring his next treatment plan.

He knows one thing. He won’t have another surgery.

“Nick always says ‘I’m in a win-win situation. If I beat this cancer, then I beat a cancer that’s very aggressive. And if I don’t, then I will be in heaven with Jesus, and that is a win-win,’” Tammy said.

Nick, sitting nearby, nods his head. “That gives me goosebumps,” he said.

For now, Nick continues the fight that Nancy, Jacob, and many other Nebraskan children have already lost.

“Experts are telling us this is affecting our children. There are real life and death situations being played out here,” Sousek said. “We have to start paying attention. It’s our kids.”

The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter.

This article was produced as a project for the University of Southern California Annenberg Center for Health Journalisms 2022 National Fellowship.

2022 8th Grade Conservation Day

The Lower Niobrara Natural Resource district held their 8th Grade Conservation Day on October 20,2022 at the Butte Gold Course for the 8th graders of their district. They had students from Niobrara, Verdigre, and Boyd County this year, with a total of 49 kids, 4 teachers and 14 presenters/helpers. The kids were divided into 4 groups and went around to the different hands-on sessions. The weather was perfect to send the day outside enjoying nature. They had 8 sessions covering topics like Soil Health, Soil, Biodiversity, Wildlife, Tree’s, Careers in NRD, Watershed, and Nitrates.

The 8th Grade Conservation Day wouldn’t be possible without our natural resources professionals from across Nebraska who came to share their expertise with the students. The presenters came from variety of agencies and towns, Natural Resources Conservation Services, UNL Nebraska Extension, Lower Loup NRD, Lewis and Clark NRD, Lower Elkhorn BGMA coordinator, Nebraska Forestry, and the Lower Niobrara NRD staff.

Cost Share Available For Reverse Osmosis Treatment

This guidance document is advisory in nature but is binding on an agency until amended by such agency. A guidance document does not include internal procedural documents that only affect the internal operations of the agency and does not impose additional requirements or penalties on regulated parties or include confidential information or rules and regulations made in accordance with
the Administrative Procedure Act. If you believe that this guidance document imposes additional requirements or penalties on regulated parties, you may request a review of the document.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
22-051 June 2022


LB 1014e Section 51: Reverse Osmosis


The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), was signed into law by the President on March 11, 2021.
The State of Nebraska was allocated $1.04 billion of Coronavirus State Fiscal Recovery Funds, which in
part may be used to make necessary investments in water and sewer infrastructure. In the final rule
adopted for implementation of these funds, the U.S. Department of the Treasury aligned the eligible
uses of these funds with the wide range of types or categories of projects that would be eligible to
receive financial assistance through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund (CWSRF) or Drinking Water
State Revolving Fund (DWSRF). In Nebraska, the SRF programs are administered by Nebraska
Department of Environment and Energy (NDEE).


Signed into law by Governor Pete Ricketts on April 13, 2021, Section 51 of Legislative Bill No. 1014e
states that these funds are “…for grants for reverse osmosis systems, which shall only be used for such
purpose”. The narrative of the legislation further clarified that the NDEE “…shall provide grants for
villages and cities of the second class to install reverse osmosis systems in community water systems
where drinking water test levels are above ten parts per million of nitrate and, if appropriate, provide
grant funds for use to install reverse osmosis systems if test levels for nitrate in drinking water pumped
from private wells are above ten parts per million”

Reverse Osmosis treatment to remove nitrates from drinking water is eligible for assistance under the DWSRF, and therefore under ARPA. The ARPA final rule states that eligible projects can also include
rehabilitation of private wells, testing initiatives to identify contaminants in wells, and treatment
activities and remediation strategies that address contamination.


Total Funding Amounts: $4,000,000
Public Water Systems: $2,800,000
Property Owners: $1,200,000


Period of Availability: See requirements under specific programs below.
Who is Eligible:

• Villages and Cities of the Second Class (population 5,000 or below) with a community water
system where drinking water test levels are above ten parts per million (10 ppm) of nitrate.
• Property owners of private wells with drinking water test levels above 10 ppm of nitrate.[1][2]
1 To ensure that these funds provide a benefit to public health, private wells must be registered with the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources.
2 Private wells constructed in pits or using a sandpoint method of installation will be excluded from consideration due to the increased potential for coliform bacteria to be present in the well.

Eligible uses of funds:
• Reverse Osmosis treatment to remove nitrates from drinking water.
• Testing initiatives to identify contaminants in wells.


Application Procedure for Community Public Water Systems ($2,800,000 Total)
Funding Amount: To be determined as part of ranked choice evaluation process
Period of Availability: Application period closes September 30, 2022, with contracts for construction
needed by September 30, 2024 with substantial completion of construction by September 30, 2026


• Must submit a needs survey form to the SRF Section at NDEE by September 30, 2022. Forms will
be mailed out to all potentially eligible entities by July 22, 2022, based on the last five years of
testing data from the Department’s Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS). SDWIS is
the database of record for implementing Nebraska’s Safe Drinking Water Act and all system
testing results indicating nitrates above 10 ppm are presently known.
• Cost impacts of operation and maintenance for any potential awardee will also be evaluated to
ensure that the local government entity is capable of meeting all technical, financial and
managerial aspects of operating a Reverse Osmosis treatment plant without unreasonable costs
being placed on its residents. Preference may be given to those communities that have
completed water studies of their system.
The NDEE will publicly notice the proposed the list of community public water systems eligible for this
Section 51 ARPA assistance for comment. After resolution of any comments received, the selected
applicants will be required to submit planning documents meeting the requirements of Title 179 – Public
Water Systems, Chapter 7 – Siting, Design and Construction of Public Water Systems, and where
applicable, those noted in the “Recommended Standards for Water Works”, 2007 Edition. These
standards are required of all public water system projects in the state.


The NDEE will enter into a contract with the community(ies) to provide the authorized grant assistance
up to the $2,800,000 for State Fiscal Year 2022-23 authorized in Section 51 of LB1014e. The contract
will contain provisions to ensure the funds meet the requirements of ARPA noted in the U.S.
Department of Treasury State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds Final Rule (SLFRF-Final-Rule.pdf
(treasury.gov)), notably the Compliance and Reporting guidance (SLFRF Compliance and Reporting
Guidance (treasury.gov)). Additional information may be found at SLFRF-Final-Rule-FAQ.pdf
(treasury.gov). Projects must be completed in accordance with Title 179 – Chapter 7, to confirm all state
laws will be met. Those requirements will ensure nitrate levels in public water systems owned by
Villages and Cities of the Second Class are reduced to concentrations below 10 ppm in drinking water.
Should any of the contracts with the selected applicants exceed $1 million in capital expenditures,
written justification must be completed in accordance with the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds
Final Rule but is not required to be submitted to the U.S Treasury. (Page 201 of ARPA Final Rule)


The contracts will contain a clause that all work must be under contract for construction by September
30, 2024 for substantial completion by September 30, 2026. Should the contract date be missed by
communities, funds will be re-allocated to other awarded projects determined by the Department to
best meet the ARPA required dates of under contract by December 31, 2024 and construction
completed by December 31, 2026, respectively.


Procedure for Property Owners
Funding Amount: Up to $4,000 per small treatment installations via rebates


Period of Availability: Application period opens January 1, 2023 and closes June 30, 2024 with
installations needing to be completed by September 30, 2024

• Property owners will be eligible for rebates for small treatment installations, those effective for
the removal of nitrates above 10 ppm for up to 100 gallons of consumptive water use per day.
Minimum requirements for any treatment device are presented in Appendix A below. Should
applications exceed funding amounts, ranking will be based on concentration of nitrate.
• Information on the rebate program and applications for assistance will be made available at
http://dee.ne.gov/ – only complete applications will be accepted to maintain compliance with
ARPA requirements. A directional video to assist the public with the application process will be
posted on that webpage.
• Property owners seeking rebates will have to submit water quality data from the State
laboratory, with testing results dated no earlier than January 1, 2022, and a cost estimate from a
licensed plumber for the installation of a reverse osmosis treatment device certified by the
American National Standards Institute, to and for pre-approval by the NDEE. Testing is available
to any private citizen in the state at https://www.nebraska.gov/dhhs/water-testkits/private.html.
• Following pre-approval, the property owner must submit adequate documentation of the
treatment installation, including but not limited to proof of treatment device purchase, certified
statement of and/or photographs of installation. Rebates for 100% of the device purchase and
installation cost up to $4,000 will be processed by NDEE, which can also include costs for testing.


For this rebate program the NDEE will be responsible for documenting that the requirements of ARPA
noted in the U.S. Department of Treasury State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds Final Rule (SLFRF-FinalRule.pdf (treasury.gov)), and notably those in the Compliance and Reporting guidance (SLFRF
Compliance and Reporting Guidance (treasury.gov)
) are met. By relying on a licensed plumber, all state
and local laws will be met. The requirements in Appendix A will ensure nitrate levels in drinking water
from private wells are reduced to concentrations below 10 ppm.


ARPA funds must be under contract/purchase order for installation by the end of 2024. Therefore, the
application window will close on June 30, 2024 with installations needing to be completed by September
30, 2024. Any excess rebate program funds would be transferred to ongoing Community Public Water
System projects.


Appendix A
PRIVATE WELL INSTALLATION REQUIREMENTS

a. Treatment Systems Certification – Systems that are American National Standards
Institute (ANSI) certified (National Sanitation Foundation, Water Quality Association, or
Underwriters Laboratories) for removal of nitrates, and provide proof of that certification
to the Department.
b. Performance Indication Device – All devices must have a performance indication
device (PID) which alerts the user when the device is no longer meeting treatment
standards, and be calibrated to signal the customer prior to the device reaching its
exhaustion stage.
c. Confirmation Testing – After installation, all devices will have a sample collected from
and tested for nitrates at the State Laboratory. The results will be submitted to the
Department

Open House held Celebrating 50 Years of NRD’s

Throughout 2022, Nebraska Natural Resources Districts (NRDs) are celebrating 50 years, commemorating breakthroughs, and achievements in conservation. The Lower Niobrara NRD held an Open House July 14th to celebrate and a chance to look back at pictures and memories of how the NRD has changed and grown in the past 50 years. Thank you to all who came to the office and enjoyed the amazing cake and cookies, shared memories, and stories with us and most of all helped us celebrate our 50th anniversary.

“We are proud to celebrate five decades of protecting, conserving and improving Nebraska’s nature resources.” Said Dr. Orval Gigstad, Nebraska Association of Resources Districts president. “It’s amazing to see the conservations progress that has been made these last 50 years and NRD directors and staff know the work we do today – planting trees, water management, soil health- will directly impact our future.”

After the devastation of the Dust Bowl, special purpose districts were developed to sole local soil and water-related problems. But the puzzle of overlapping authorities and responsibilities provided confusion at best.

In 1969, Senator Maurice Kremer introduced legislative bill 1357 to combine Nebraska’s 154 special purpose entities into 24 Natural Resources Districts by July 1972. In 1989, The middle Missouri Tributaries NRD and the Papio NRD merged to become the Papio-Missouri River NRD resulting in today’s 23 Natural Resources Districts.

Today, Nebraska’s unique system of locally controlled, watershed-based conservation is widely admired throughout the nation. NRDs deliver several state and federal programs including many projects with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy (NDEE), Nebraska Department of Natural Resources (NeDNR) and the University of Nebraska. These partnerships equate into real dollars for Nebraska agriculture and communities.

Across the state, Natural Resources Districts construct projects, implement programs and aid landowners in conservation and natural resources management. When necessary, they enact regulations to protect our resources. While all NRDs share the 12 main responsibilities, each district sets its own priorities and develops its own programs to best serve and protect Nebraska’s natural resources. Often the most recognizable NRD responsibilities include groundwater management, flood protection and conservation trees.

Since being created in 1972, NRDs have experienced tremendous growth in the responsibilities given to them by state statute, especially in protecting groundwater.  Despite being the No. 1 irrigated state in the nation, Nebraska’s statewide groundwater levels have been sustained at levels less than a foot below the pre-irrigation development in the 1950s.  In some areas, groundwater levels are even higher.  Many states are facing massive groundwater declines with almost depleted aquifers. 

Today the Lower Niobrara NRD covers approximately 1.7 million acres. We have adopted voluntary IMP on March Marc 3,2014. We developed well and acre ranking models, certified all groundwater irrigated acres and recently added 700 new irrigated acres and approved 9 new wells. We currently have 238,000 irrigated acres, 2686 active irrigated wells. Groundwater irrigation accounts for over 90% of all the irrigation in our district. We issue over 1,389 chemigation permits per year, sell around 12,200 trees and shrubs yearly, present in all elementary schools in our district. We are part of the Bazile Groundwater Management Area (BGMA) along with 3 other districts. We have the West Knox Rural Water District in Verdigre which serves 250 rural customers plus villages of Verdigre and Winnetoon.

West Knox Wellhead Protection Plan

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

WEST KNOX WELLHEAD PROTECTION PLAN

Public Hearing

August 24, 2-4 pm

ZCBJ Hall

401 S Main Street

Verdigre, NE 68783

The Lower Niobrara Natural Resources District (LNNRD) will hold a public hearing regarding a Wellhead Protection Plan for the West Knox Rural Water System in Knox County in Nebraska. The meeting will be held at ZCBJ Hall on August 24th from 2-4 pm.

This public hearing is being held to receive public feedback, provide information about the wellhead protection plan development process, why the plan is needed, and the best management practices associated with a wellhead protection area. The goal is to establish a recommended plan that is supported by the public and the LNNRD.

All interested persons are invited to attend and present relevant comments and questions. Project information will be available and personnel from the LNNRD and the consultant team will be present to answer questions and receive comments. A formal presentation will not be included as part of this public hearing. The information open house format allows the public to come at any time during the advertised hours, gather pertinent information about the project, speak one-on-one with project personnel, and leave as they wish.

LNNRD will make every reasonable accommodation to provide an accessible meeting facility for all persons. Appropriate provisions for the hearing and visually challenged or persons with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) will be made if the LNNRD is notified by August 1, 2022. The public is being encouraged to make suggestions or express concerns regarding this proposed project. Comments will be collected through August 24, 2022. Written comments or requests should be submitted to: Stacey Roach, Olsson, 601 P Street, Suite 200, Lincoln, NE 68508; sroach@olsson.com; telephone 402-458-5042.

Information regarding the proposed project (including the draft plan) has been made available on the project website at https://lnnrd.org/about/west-knox-rural-water/. For those without internet access, please contact the individual above.

ACE Camp Scholarship Winner

The Lower Niobrara NRD awarded John Wendt a scholarship to attend the Adventure Camp about the Environment (ACE Camp).  ACE camp is 4 days packed full of exploring, learning and outdoor fun at the State 4-H Camp in Halsey, NE. The camp is for youths is for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. The camps sessions are on Forestry, Water, Range, Soils and Wildlife. John Wendt is a son of Michael and Brenda Wendt from Bristow NE. John presented to the LNNRD board about is time spent at the camp. His favorite activity was making and launching bottle rockets which his team placed 2nd.  There were approximately 70 kids that attended ACE camp this year. John stated that he really enjoyed the camp and is hoping to go next year.