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Colorado, Nebraska jostle over water rights amid drought

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Colorado, Nebraska jostle over water rights amid drought


OVID, Colo. — Shortly after dawn on the excessive plains of northeastern Colorado, Don Schneider tinkers with seed-dispensing gear on a mammoth corn planter. The day’s job: Fastidiously sowing tons of of acres of seed between lengthy rows of final yr’s desiccated stalks to make sure the irrigation water he is collected over the winter will final till harvest time.

A two-hour’s drive eastward, Steve Hanson, a fifth-generation Nebraska cattle breeder who additionally produces corn and different crops, is getting ready to seed, having saved winter water to assist guarantee his merchandise make it to market. Like Schneider and numerous others on this semi-arid area, he needs his kids and grandchildren to have the ability to work the wealthy soil homesteaded by their ancestors within the 1800s.

Schneider and Hanson discover themselves on reverse sides of a looming, politically-fraught dispute over water resembling the type that till now has been reserved for the parched U.S. states alongside the Colorado River Basin.

As local weather change-fueled megadrought edges eastward, Nebraska’s Republican-controlled Legislature this yr voted to maneuver ahead with a plan that surprised Colorado state leaders. The Cornhusker State needs to divert water in Colorado by invoking an obscure, 99-year-old compact between the states that permits Nebraska to grab Colorado land alongside the South Platte River to construct a canal.

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Nebraska’s plan underscores an growing urge for food all through the West to preemptively safe water as winter snows and year-round rainfall diminish, forcing states to reallocate more and more scarce flows in basins such because the South Platte and its better-known cousin, the Colorado River.

Nebraska’s Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, gave valuable few particulars in calling for $500 million in money reserves and one-time federal pandemic funds to be spent on the undertaking, apart from to say it is going to profit agriculture, energy era and municipal consuming water. Ricketts decried proposals in Colorado to both siphon or retailer extra South Platte water, particularly within the rapidly-growing Denver metro space, saying they threaten Nebraska’s water rights tons of of miles downstream.

The announcement despatched Colorado officers scrambling to mud off the 1923 compact, which each Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court docket signed off on and nonetheless stands because the regulation of the land. Democratic Gov. Jared Polis vowed to “aggressively assert” Colorado’s water rights, and state lawmakers lambasted the proposal. GOP Rep. Richard Holtorf, an space cattleman, declared: “You give Nebraska what they’re due however you do not give them a lot else.”

For now, Colorado will not be going to legally problem Nebraska’s proper to a canal underneath the compact, stated Kevin Rein, Colorado’s state engineer and director of the Colorado Division of Water Assets. “The opposite facet of that coin is that we’ll make each effort that their operation is in compliance with the compact” and protects Colorado’s rights, Rein stated.

The South Platte meanders 380 miles from the Rocky Mountains by the Colorado city of Julesburg on the Nebraska line. Relying on the season, it could seemingly disappear in elements, solely to re-emerge downstream. It might turn into a torrent with heavy snowmelt or flooding. Cottonwood bushes line its banks and sandbars create the phantasm that it consists of a number of creeks in lots of locations.

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The compact permits Nebraska to construct a canal to say 500 cubic ft (greater than 3,700 gallons) per second between mid-October and April, the non-irrigation season.

Nebraska’s Legislature allotted $53.5 million for an engineering research for the undertaking, which as initially envisioned underneath the compact would start someplace close to Schneider’s farm in Ovid and run at the least 24 miles into Nebraska’s Perkins County, the place Hanson’s operations are headquartered.

Hanson’s all for it, saying the extra water there may be to irrigate his and his neighbors’ expansive farms, the higher their progeny can keep it up that legacy.

“I need my grandsons to have the ability to have the reassurance that they’ll farm irrigated ought to they select,” he stated.

“When the phrase got here out that the ditch could be coming, let me inform you, our space was elated,” stated Collin Malmkar, 79, who together with his spouse Jeanne, 75, and their kids develop corn, popcorn and peas on 15,000 acres within the Perkins County seat of Grant. Jeanne’s great-grandfather labored on a failed 1898 effort to dig a canal from Ovid.

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Schneider, whose son Bradon additionally works the fields, is nervous the undertaking may kill his life’s work in a area that’s lengthy struggled to maintain its youthful generations from leaving.

“If we needed to convert this to a dryland farm, I’m undecided the place we’d begin” to downsize, stated Schneider, 63. “I’d like to retire in a few years. However my 30-year-old son, what’s he going to do?”

Schneider and his neighbors take surplus South Platte water in winter to reinforce the wells they use to irrigate their crops in summer time. That water, in flip, finally makes its approach again into the South Platte. If Nebraska claims that winter water underneath the compact, Schneider says the choice — non-irrigated dryland farming — means lowered crop yields, fewer farms and fewer jobs.

Each Hanson and Schneider — and lots of others on this area the place occasional “Donald Trump 2024” billboards dot two-lane highways — do not like to make use of the phrases “local weather change.” The shortage of moisture to work with speaks for itself.

“One thing’s altering, that’s for positive,” Schneider stated. “I’m undecided what’s actually driving it. We often get buried in snow, and we haven’t seen these in years.”

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“Whereas I’m not a 100% believer in it, among the ideas are that we’re getting brief on water due to local weather change,” Hanson avers. Scientists have lengthy warned that human-made local weather change has made the West hotter and drier up to now 30 years.

Remnants of the 1898 effort to dig a canal might be seen in Julesburg, the place grass-lined ditches run into the modern-day Julesburg cemetery, Interstate 76 and even the Colorado Welcome Heart on the state line.

Jay Goddard, a banker in Julesburg, walks the deserted ditch on farmland he owns subsequent to the cemetery and marvels on the effort put into it. His financial institution supplies working loans to farmers on either side of the border to maintain them working till harvest time.

“If we lose any of our irrigation for our communities up and down the river, whether or not it’s within the Nebraska facet or the Colorado facet, we lose farmers,” Goddard stated. “We lose children in faculties, our electrical corporations that serve us, the insurance coverage businesses to the grain elevators, grocery shops to pharmacies. if we lose irrigation, the communities proceed to dry up. Actually.”

Schneider echoes the identical worries in his function as a Sedgewick County commissioner. Tax income plummeted after Ovid’s previous sugar beet manufacturing facility closed; the county sheriff lately took a higher-paying job nearer to the Entrance Vary in Colorado.

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“We will’t purchase a deputy,” Schneider says.

Farmers on either side emphasize they’d wish to see a workaround that serves all people. All agree {that a} canal undertaking shall be years within the making — and that if disputes come up, attorneys specializing within the intricacies of water regulation or eminent area may have a area day.

“I don’t suppose I’ll see it in my lifetime,” says Schneider. However he provides: “(Gov. Pete) Ricketts has confounded everybody.”

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Related Press author Grant Schulte in Lincoln, Nebraska contributed to this report.

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Related Press local weather and environmental protection receives assist from a number of personal foundations. See extra about AP’s local weather initiative right here. The AP is solely answerable for all content material. ———

The Related Press receives assist from the Walton Household Basis for protection of water and environmental coverage. The AP is solely answerable for all content material. For all of AP’s environmental protection, go to https://apnews.com/hub/setting



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Years after landmark study, number of missing Natives in Nebraska has nearly doubled

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Years after landmark study, number of missing Natives in Nebraska has nearly doubled


LINCOLN — Lestina Saul-Merdassi still remembers the question she asked herself when her cousin went missing.

Will someone in power try to find him? Will anyone? 

Her cousin, Merle Saul, went missing from Grand Island in 2015. He’s one of an estimated 4,200 unsolved cases of missing and murdered American Indians and Alaska Natives nationally, as reported by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

“I feel like he was basically written off as a transient, written off because he suffered from alcohol-related issues,” said Saul-Merdassi, an Omaha resident and member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate Tribe, during a 2023 legislative hearing. “People did not take into consideration that he is a United States veteran, and he risked his life in the Vietnam War for this country.” 

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In 2019, the Nebraska Legislature sought to better understand the reason behind the disproportionate number of missing Indigenous women and children in the state. Lawmakers directed the Nebraska State Patrol to investigate and produce recommendations to address the issue. 

Five years later, few of those recommendations have been implemented. And the number of reported cases of missing Indigenous people in Nebraska has jumped from 23 in 2020 to 43 in 2024. 

Law enforcement, state officials and activists offered a range of explanations for the rise in reported cases and seeming inaction on the report’s recommendations.

Better counting and awareness could be behind part of the increase in known cases, the patrol said.

Leadership changes, the COVID-19 pandemic, historical distrust, and coordination challenges among law enforcement agencies have complicated progress, the report’s authors said. 

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“Progress is not as fast as I would always like it to be, but I do believe that we are making progress,” said Judi gaiashkibos, a member of the Ponca Tribe and director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, which worked with the patrol on the report.

The report, released in 2020, put Nebraska at the forefront of states on the issue of missing Indigenous people. At the time it was only the second state in the country to mandate a report investigating these disparities. 

It uncovered some surprises – including that rates of missing African American and Indigenous boys and men outpaced the rate of missing Indigenous women. Other states undertook similar investigations, some using research methods first developed and used in the Nebraska report. 

Many of those other states have acted on their recommendations. Nebraska, for the most part, has not.

“When I look at the finished project and everything that I learned from it, it’s one of the things I’m most proud of, but at the same time, it’s also one of my biggest failures because we didn’t see it through,” said former Capt. Matt Sutter, who led the report for the patrol.

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A need for action 

When lawmakers passed their bill in 2019 (Legislative Bill 154), Indigenous women and girls in Nebraska were reported missing at one of the highest rates in the country.

A 2018 analysis by the Urban Indian Health Institute indicated that 10% of Indigenous missing persons cases reported across 71 cities in the U.S. originated from Omaha and Lincoln.

“We needed somebody to do something,” recalled Omaha Tribe member Renee Sans Souci, one of the founding members of Native Women’s Task Force of Nebraska, a grassroots group dedicated to raising awareness about the issue.

The investigation required by the Legislature involved a series of well-attended listening sessions in Omaha, Santee, Macy, and Winnebago. Tribal and non-tribal residents attended, as did law enforcement and other organizations.

“We were there. And we were listening,” said patrol investigator Tyler Kroenke, who was then the lieutenant of a patrol area in northeast Nebraska that overlaps with reservation land. 

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The resulting report identified three primary issues: jurisdictional uncertainty; lack of communication between law enforcement agencies; and racial misclassification of missing people.

And it identified contributing factors: poverty, high rates of domestic abuse, high levels of substance abuse and geographic isolation in some Native communities. 

Sans Souci already knew this. 

Months before the report was released, Sans Souci’s niece, Ashlea Aldrich, 29, was found dead in a field near her boyfriend’s house, according to local news reports. The family told the Sioux City Journal that they had made dozens of calls to tribal police over the years with concerns about possible domestic violence against Aldrich, but said nothing was done. 

The death certificate obtained by the Journal listed her immediate cause of death as “hypothermia complicating acute alcohol toxicity” and characterized her death as an “accident.” Aldrich’s family disagrees.

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“We have to be our own detectives, our own attorneys, and often it’s the families who have to search for their missing loved ones,” Sans Souci said. “My sister has to live with that every day.”

Four years after Aldrich’s death, activists said uncertainty and a lack of trust persist. 

“I believe some of that could go back to colonization and the U.S. Calvary, and how they violated our people, our women and our rights,” Saul-Merdassi said. 



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Former Nebraska news anchor sentenced to jail for threats

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Former Nebraska news anchor sentenced to jail for threats


Joseph Scanlan
Courtesy: Buffalo County Jail

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — A former central Nebraska TV news anchor will spend several weeks behind bars.

Joseph Scanlan, 27, was sentenced Thursday for sending threatening text messages to a woman.

Buffalo County Judge Gerald Jorgensen Jr. sentenced him to three consecutive 90-day jail terms.

But Scanlan will only serve 60 days, with credit for two days served, initially.

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Then he will be on probation until Feb. 1, when his jail time is scheduled to resume.

But the judge may suspend the rest of the jail sentence, according to court documents.

SEE ALSO: Former anchor at central Nebraska TV station accused of threatening woman

Scanlan will also spend two years on probation.

He is required to undergo counseling and take anger management and self-control classes, court records say.

Scanlan was a morning anchor at KSNB in Hastings.

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On Dec. 1, a woman filed for a protection order against Scanlan.

She said he had been harassing her since September through texts, social media and handwritten notes.

He even used a KSNB account to message her, according to the protection order request.

The woman said he was fired because of that.

A judge granted the protection order, but Scanlan violated it, launching the criminal case against him.

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He pleaded guilty to reduced charges in March.

Categories: Nebraska News, News





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Trump verdict response: Nebraska, Iowa Congressional candidates post reactions

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Trump verdict response: Nebraska, Iowa Congressional candidates post reactions


OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – Candidates for Nebraska’s most contentious political race took the opportunity to share their thoughts on the guilty verdict rendered upon former President Trump on Thursday.

“Sad day for the country,” Rep. Don Bacon posted on social media platforms Facebook and X/Twitter.

The Republican incumbent, who beat Dan Frei in the primary election earlier this month by about 12,000 votes, also noted that while he respected the decision, the case against the former president’s isn’t over.

His post concludes with: “I have trust in our legal system which includes the appeals process.”

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Sad day for the country. This is an unprecedented prosecution for a crime very seldom charged, led by a prosecutor who…

Posted by Don Bacon on Thursday, May 30, 2024

Meanwhile, his opponent, former State Sen. Tony Vargas, took direct aim at Bacon’s loyalty to Trump:

“Don Bacon has endorsed a criminally convicted felon for president and enabled his lawlessness. That level of judgment has no place in the United States Congress.”

Vargas, lost a close race to Bacon in 2022, ran unopposed in the primary.

In Iowa, Republican Congressman Randy Feenstra said the former president was targeted.

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Kevin Virgil, his opponent in Tuesday’s upcoming primary, said it was “exactly the outcome the Communists want.”

Ryan Melton, the Democratic challenger in Iowa’s 4th District race, reposted Feenstra’s comment on his own account, labeling it “Randy ‘Law and Order’ Feenstra,” after publishing his own statement on the verdict.

“If Biden was convicted of 34 felonies… I’d find someone else to vote for. It’s that simple,” he said in part.

Incumbent Republican Zach Nunn, representing Iowa’s 3rd Congressional district, responded to Thursday’s verdict by referring to a “two-tiered justice system,” and saying that voters would get the final say in November.

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Nunn is running unopposed in Tuesday’s Iowa primary.

Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds echoed Nunn’s sentiments, saying the ballot box was “the only verdict that matters.”

The only verdict that matters is the one at the ballot box in November where the American people will elect President Trump again.

Posted by Kim Reynolds on Thursday, May 30, 2024

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, posted on both her official Senate social media accounts as well as her personal accounts, saying the verdict “was never about justice.”

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