Oct 14 2008
NE/WY: Suing over the Niobrara River
For years disputes over the Republican River kept water attorneys in Nebraska busy. Now their attention is being directed as well to the Niobrara River, a stream whose management seemed to have been settled many years ago – except that some Nebraska water users are saying that the terms aren’t being honored.
A group of water users filed their lawsuit toward the end of September in Sioux County District Court in Nebraska, naming the state Department of Natural Resources Director Brian Dunnigan as defendant; they argued that he has not been enforcing the terms of a compact with Wyoming about water use and flows. Development in Wyoming, they argue, has impinged on use of the river on the Nebraska side.
That agreement, approved by the Nebraska legislature in 1963, calls “for an equitable division or apportionment of the available surface water supply of the Upper Niobrara River Basin between the States.”
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