He knows what drought looks like. Steve Sandberg farms and ranches with his son, Marc, south of Hay Springs, Neb., in the northwest part of the state where arid conditions are common.

On irrigated land, Sandberg raises corn and dry edible pinto beans in a five-year rotation, planting corn on corn, followed by a year of pinto beans. For the past 30 years, Sandberg has also served as a director on the Upper Niobrara White Natural Resources District board, and he has land within one of the NRD’s two groundwater management subareas with irrigation water allocations.

Like so many producers in the area, he wasn’t exactly thrilled with irrigation water allocations when they first were established within UNWNRD, but as a board member, he worked on the original groundwater management area rule changes and the original integrated management plan. He provided input and listened, along with other board members, to input about the allocations from an advisory committee of local irrigators.

Hay Springs receives on average about 19 inches of precipitation annually. Some years are more, and some are much, much less. Being in drought in this region is nothing new. Neither are irrigation water allocations.

Within UNWNRD, which covers Box Butte, Dawes, Sheridan and most of Sioux counties, carefully monitoring and managing groundwater resources has been standard practice for years.

In the beginning 

“Originally, we established a four-year allocation,” Sandberg recalls. “But our advisory committee suggested going to a five-year allocation to allow for a high-water-use crop like sugarbeets to be planted once within those five years. We went to the five-year allocation, and it has been that way ever since.”

Groundwater resources have been highly managed within this NRD since the establishment of those original allocations, and the rules are revisited regularly as needed.

“Unfortunately, we have some areas of groundwater declines,” says Lynn Webster, assistant manager at UNWNRD. “In an effort to achieve the short-term goal established to minimize groundwater depletions and the long-term goal of a sustained aquifer, our board of directors — along with staff — revisited rules and regulations that were previously established for the district. Using the best information we had available, along with insights from other partner agencies and local producers, a revision of the rules was completed.”

UNWNRD has six groundwater management subareas. There is currently a moratorium on the issuance of new groundwater well drilling permits. One of the subareas has met a groundwater decline trigger level for a phase II designation, which means initiating a moratorium on expanding uses, and two of the subareas have been under water allocation since 2007. These subareas have irrigation water allocations over a five-year period of 65 inches per acre or annualized to 13 inches of irrigation water per year.

“While rules are not popular, the producers in our area really want to have a long-term ability to continue to irrigate and have done a good job managing their irrigation activities,” Webster says.

“Last year in 2022, we used 17 inches of our water allocation,” Sandberg says. “This year, it is down around 11 inches, so it all usually averages out. Sugarbeets take more irrigation water than corn, so many of the beet farmers will raise a crop of wheat in their rotation to cut down on water use.”

Flowmeters a useful tool

Of the tools used to monitor and manage groundwater resources, flowmeters at the irrigation wells are among the most useful.

“When we revised the groundwater management area rules and regulations, we required everyone to put on a flowmeter,” Sandberg says. “Our managers did a good job of finding cost-share money and allocating that to producers to cover the flowmeters. These have helped make producers better irrigators.”

With soil moisture probes and flowmeters, producers can now monitor and manage when they need to irrigate from their smartphones, he adds.

“Flowmeters were not initially popular and still are not for some, but they really are a necessary tool for the management of water for irrigation,” Webster adds. “I always found it interesting that a producer will measure almost everything like fuel, fertilizer, labor and seed cost, and equipment, but the amount of water applied was pretty much a guess.”

There is an error factor with flowmeters, but they are an accurate tool for managing irrigation water applications, Webster says.

“Every high-capacity irrigation well is metered in the NRD and read by NRD staff every fall to document water use, which is reported back to every producer, whether you are in an allocation or not,” he notes.

Combined with weekly crop water use reports, groundwater monitoring through a network of wells in the NRD and cost-share incentives for things such as drop nozzles, rainfall auto-shutoffs, variable frequency drives and moisture sensors, producers and the UNWNRD have plenty of tools to maintain adequate groundwater resources for future generations of irrigators, farmers and ranchers in the region.

Learn more at unwnrd.org.