2007
Week 13
March 24, 2007

Hi

The “Underserved Award” is for real! A beautiful blue pottery serving plate. From a group of folks who give their time and energy to search out and care for those who are underserved with health care. It is a high honor to be valued by people like that.

We are nearing the end of our budget work and no one has complained that the poor get more than they deserve. O.K. April Fool. You can substitute “the rich” for “the poor” and it still stands: April Fool!

I guess it is human nature to have “pity parties.” Once in a while we ought to give that up for Lent. And move on. When I was in the farming business every few years we had perfect weather for corn -- nicely alternating rain and sun. The men in their circle in the church yard, where they should be praising God for such a blessing, would loudly groan, “But we do not know what next week will be like!”

The attitude is part of an in-joke in the budget committee, when the press is absent. One of us will note that a particular group, who is doing quite well thank you, is having a pity party and sending plaintive messages. One of us will ask, “How do they figure that?” The answer is, “Someone brought beer.”

Nebraska is doing very well. We certainly have areas where we, leaders and people, are working to improve every day. However. We are in the top ten in the results of K-12 education. Omaha has been ranked in the top ten business climates by two groups. We have new businesses in small towns, aided by training and loans from the state. Large businesses and cities are doing well. Our Med Center is highly ranked, drawing patients and grants from across the nation. Our university and colleges are first class, with aggressive leadership. Corporate gifts to improve the community are, in my opinion, unmatched anywhere in the nation. In the last few years the gifts total $2 billion in new money around the state. Omaha has a fine arts scene that will match cities twice its size. The city's river landscape has been transformed from a vacant warehouse/commercial wasteland to an attractive setting that draws and holds folks from out of state. One energetic CEO, new since January, laughed about her friends back east who wondered why she would come to Omaha. “From their question, it is obvious they have not been to Omaha!” She added this is her last move.

Dilemma of the year: water. Which includes another first. Nebraska is the most blessed state in the nation for water reserves. The water stored underground, in the pockets of shale and rocks, would cover the entire state to a depth of 35 to 38 feet. It has to be managed, which causes much emotion in the pointy-topped office building where I work.

We get an occasional letter about how dumb we are, to think that an irrigation well would affect a river. “You can't tell me water will .... ” He has that right. When persons have their hearing aids turned off you can't tell them anything.

Since we have spent over $30 million on the research of how our water moves, it could be a good idea to read the reports. Models loaded into computers answer any questions we have about the relation of our aquifer to our wells and rivers. I will greatly oversimplify, to make the point. Let's take one gallon of water forty feet beneath the surface soil of mid-Nebraska. We can tell you how much of it came from rain directly above and how long that took. How much came from a nearby river and how long that took. If it is pumped upward, how long for the transfer of water from the river to replace it, or if we shut down the well, how long until the river flow is improved. Shutting down an 8 inch well next to the river will affect the flow in a few months, but if located a few miles away it will take years to increase the flow.

We joke about the Platte being a mile wide and an inch deep. It is a mile wide, but quite deep. Not much of it shows above the ground. We can tell you how its flow affects a river 40 miles away. Or a city well field 100 miles away.

The point is that we share our water, and must manage it together. We are a community. Omaha pumps drinking water from the Platte valley, twenty miles away. A few leaders have complained to me that the state monitors Omaha's water and reserves the right to restrict it. “It's our water!” No, it isn't, fellow, until you learn the definition of “our.” To make the point, I say that when we tell a corn grower at Lexington to shut down her well on the Platte we are doing it to reserve water for down stream Omaha. That is stretching to make a point, but it is accurate. We are in this together. Get over it.

Bring in Kansas, who says we are trapping too much water on its trip through Nebraska from Wyoming and Colorado. Their leaders are threatening a lawsuit of over $50 million as we fuss about it. Since irrigation uses 95% of the water, and irrigation is a key item in the state's economy, we must use tax dollars to buy down the amount of irrigation. Those are fighting words, pardners.

It is raining, which creates another water dilemma. If there is pollution when the water reaches the river, who is to blame and who will pay to clean it up? That is a $500 question for every tax payer in the state. The pollution on my roof is mostly particulates of gasoline, burned as cars drive by. If my down spouts empty on a large lawn, much will be stopped in the grass. However, half of my roof drains directly to the street, where the flow picks up particulates of rubber from all those tires that wear down.

We have had motions in the legislature to charge the costs to me, since it is my roof. And to developers since they build the cement roads in new subdivisions. And to churches, since they have parking lots. But not much to banks, since they have so little cement. It is called taxing “impervious surfaces.” I growled that the only impervious surfaces I saw were the bald heads around me and I was willing to tax them.

We truly do not know what to do. Streams must be clean enough to drink, to fish, to swim. Omaha's bill could reach a billion dollars.

You may have heard a few years ago, land owners in western Nebraska came up with the idea to pump water to sell to desperate Denver, willing to pay a lot. Again, “It is our water.” No. It is OUR water. We have delivered the message: Nebraska is a community.

A blessed community, willing to be a blessing.

Lowen