By: Jeff Rice | The Colorado Sun
Attorney General Phil Weiser is ready for the fight over water flowing across the border: “Nebraska’s burden to prove claims is incredibly high.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Nebraska’s lawsuit against Colorado over a proposed canal that would take water out of the South Platte River in Colorado and send it to a reservoir in Nebraska.
Nebraska claims Colorado is deliberately obstructing efforts to build the ditch, known as the Perkins Canal, even though everyone agrees Nebraska has the right to do so. The canal is necessary, Nebraska says, because Colorado isn’t sending enough water into Nebraska.
The Perkins Canal would divert water from the South Platte River near Ovid to a storage site somewhere in Nebraska. The South Platte River Compact, ratified by both states and Congress in 1923, requires Colorado to guarantee a flow in the river of 120 cubic feet per second at a water gauge near the state line during the irrigation season. The compact also authorizes Nebraska to build the canal and grants the right to use the power of eminent domain to acquire land on which to build it. Initial work was done on the canal more than a century ago, but the project was abandoned as unfeasible.
Nebraska resurrected the idea in late 2021, citing fears that urban development along Colorado’s Interstate 25 corridor and plans to expand water storage were causing Colorado to violate the terms of the 1923 compact.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE COLORADO SUN