Colorado Accuses Nebraska of Taking Too Much Water in South Platte Dispute

By Michael Booth | The Colorado Sun

Colorado returned fire Monday in the water war with Nebraska, telling the U.S. Supreme Court that it’s actually the cornhusker state, not Colorado, that’s taking more than their fair share of the water out of the South Platte River system and robbing their neighbor of precious resources. 

“We will defend the rights of Colorado water users, which is why we are asserting our own claims against Nebraska for using water that belongs to Colorado under the compact,” Attorney General Phil Weiser said, in a release accompanying a detailed SCOTUS brief in Nebraska’s lawsuit, and a request for a partial dismissal of Nebraska’s claims. 

“If anything, Nebraska owes Colorado for the water that the Cornhusker State has wrongfully taken,” according to the release from Weiser’s office. 

Nebraska claims it wants to build a canal into Colorado to tap the river, a right it holds under an old interstate compact, and sued Colorado for allegedly blocking efforts to buy farmland for the canal. The original suit also blames Colorado for taking too much water before the South Platte runs into Nebraska, with a bogus augmentation plan that doesn’t restore flows that Nebraska counts on. 

Such interstate water disputes go directly to the Supreme Court as final arbiter of complex, decades-old negotiations. 

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