"When the well's dry, we know the worth of water"
January 31, 2013

The quotation comes from Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanack", but it's highly relevant today as the Lower Elkhorn NRD (which serves much of northeastern Nebraska) evaluates whether to limit the amount of groundwater that can be used to irrigate crops in the area. The severe drought has caused some domestic water wells to literally run dry, leaving some households without a drinking water supply. But agricultural users say that without enough water for irrigation, their crops will dry out and that, in turn, would be devastating to the local economy. The NRD voted last week to impose some limits on crop irrigation and will require any new work on domestic wells to make them deep enough to resist going dry when irrigators are using the water as well.

January 2013
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