JEFFERSON COUNTY - The Little Blue Natural Resources District's plans to build wells on a private farm near Alexandria has prompted some questions from other citizens of Jefferson County: chiefly, will these new wells lower the quantity of the water in wells that already exist in this part of the state, and should the water extracted here in Southeast Nebraska be used to augment the water supply of another state?

Expecting a large crowd like there was for the initial planning and zoning discussion last month, the Jefferson County commissioners hosted a public hearing in the county courtroom this week, where many county citizens voiced their concerns over the Little Blue NRD's plans to build two municipal wells and a pump station on a private property near Alexandria.

The wells in question would be built on a farm owned by Bill and Mary Glenn, who said that sacrificing a potential source of irrigation for their farm is their way of giving back to the community.

"Considering what we ourselves and others already knew about good groundwater on our farm, we had two choices: we could do nothing, and only keep water access for ourselves and then later we’d regret that we didn’t share when we had plenty. Or we work with the larger community, which is what we chose to do," Mary Glenn said in her remarks at Tuesday's hearing. 

"There is no hidden agenda. We think we’re making a very fair trade-off by not irrigating and leaving that water for domestic use, and we’re really not increasing consumption significantly," Bill Glenn said.

The Little Blue Natural Resources District has been pursuing a project like this one since 2019, general manager Scott Nelson said Tuesday. The group had previously been in discussions with the city of Fairbury and with the village of Alexandria, but progress was stalled - eventually, they settled on the territory on the Glenns' farm as the home base for this project.

"I personally don’t look at political boundaries when it comes to water," Nelson said. "You look at the aquifers around here and the availability of water in [places like] Washington, Kansas...and I don’t care if it’s in Lower Big Blue[‘s territory]: if they need water, that’s just an essential need that we should provide as a government entity, and forget about this political boundary stuff."

There were plenty of other people who, via a show of hands, suggested their support for these plans. There were many more that said they were opposed, and about a half dozen people spoke out against the proposals, raising concerns about the quality and availability of the water at this location, and the impact the drilling of new wells would have on the quantity of water available to others in the nearby area.

"First I want to publicly state that I am not opposed to the Little Blue Water project as it is currently operated – this system has a 50-year history of purchasing water from Fairbury. Even a ‘no’ vote from the commissioners will not shut off the flow of water to this project," said David Endorf, a Daykin landowner who has long been one of the most prominent opponents of this project. "In simplest terms, these wells and surrounding wells, both domestic and irrigation, are losing water much faster than they are recharging – this is not sustainable for short-term or long-term quantity of water. This is one person – or entity – violating Nebraska statutes that are affecting another person’s well. This is a taking of water from another person’s well."

On the flipside, Little Blue's leadership cited a study that concluded that this project would not have a significant impact on the existing wells around it. They presented a study executed by hydrogeologist Jacob Bauer that includes data that predict 12 wells close to the proposed wellfield would "potentially experience water level declines of between 1% to 2% saturated thickness due to the project's pumping" - but the conclusion was that this potential decrease was not statistically significant. 

"It is my professional opinion that the project's wellfield, if operated as planned, will not prevent the operation of the surrounding wells, or result in their inability to withdraw the same amounts of water those surrounding wells have historically withdrawn at any point in the foreseeable future," Bauer wrote in the study's conclusion. 

Jefferson County's planning and zoning committee unanimously approved all three proposals in mid-August, a nominal step ahead of this week's consideration by the county commissioners. 

"We’re not voting here on whether we are for or against the project. We cannot vote that way. We can only vote on what is set before us," said Michael Dux, the most tenured member of the board. "Over the last 25 years, we’ve had many planning and zoning meetings to update our regs [regulations], and only a few of the people here attended those meetings. And so these are the regs that we have to consider, these are the regs that we have to vote upon."

"We as commissioners have to look at this as a land use only decision, but the purpose of our regulations is promoting health, safety, convenience, order, prosperity and welfare of present and future inhabitants of Jefferson County, so I think we still have to think about that as well," said Danielle Schwab, the newest member of the board, who said she reviewed all 400-plus pages of the regulations to see if these proposals passed muster. "We also have to look and see if these [projects] meet our comprehensive plan – which we’re in the middle of working on a new one – but the plan that we’re currently under requires that any public utilities be provided in a way that prevents environmental degradation."

Ultimately, the commissioners voted 2-1 to approve all three proposals, with Dux and Mark Schoenrock voting for all three, and Schwab voting against. 

Despite the results of this hearing, and those from the initial planning and zoning discussion, the opponents of these proposals expressed confidence that they still have further recourse: later this year, they are expecting the results from a lawsuit that has already been filed at the state level, and, Endorf said, the Department of Water, Energy and Environment will make the final call as to whether the proposed permits can and should be approved.