News Detail
LRNRD landowners must pay irrigated land
taxes to maintain acre certification, water allocation
11/14/2008 10:31:49 AM
By GINGER JENSEN
Kearney Hub
ALMA - Lower Republican Natural Resources District farmers must pay irrigated land taxes on acres with water allocations or face losing their ability to irrigate the land in the future.
At their meeting Thursday in Alma, LRNRD board members decided to keep that rule in place, even though it's different than a current state tax rule.
The Nebraska Department of Revenue has scheduled a public hearing Nov. 21 in Lincoln to determine if its rule on taxing irrigated acres in overappropriated or fully appropriated river basins, including the Republican Basin, should be changed.
LRNRD Manager Mike Clements said Thursday that if county assessors follow the letter of the current state rule, land in the designated basins must have been physically watered during the growing season to be certified and taxed as irrigated. The designation is made annually by county assessors.
Land not watered during the growing season is designated as dryland.
In contrast, the LRNRD doesn't require that land be watered every year to maintain its certification as irrigated. However, NRD rules say that once acres are designated as dryland and the owner pays dryland taxes, the water allocation is forever forfeited.
"If those acres permanently go to dryland, based on the NRD's rules and regulations, it will affect the property tax base for schools, county government, and other government entities," Clements said. "Local banks would want to know if the loan on property is based on irrigated as opposed to dryland."
He said LRNRD would like to have the state rule changed to reflect that acres certified as irrigated in fully appropriated or overappropriated basins will be considered irrigated for valuation and/or taxation.
"What we're saying is that if landowners receive a water allocation on certified irrigated acres, they should be paying irrigated taxes," Clements said, adding that a change in the state rule wouldn't require legislation but could be made by the state Department of Revenue.
In other LRNRD business Thursday, the board was told that a Republican Basin public meeting Wednesday in Cambridge will include DNR officials discussing Republican River Compact negotiation and accounting arbitration issues with Kansas and Colorado, preliminary 2008 water use accounting, and a forecast of the basin's water supply for 2009.
The meeting will run from 10 a.m. to around 3 p.m. at the Cambridge Community Center. People planning to stay for lunch must make reservations by e-mailing james.williams(at)nebraska.gov. For more information, call James Williams of DNR at 402-471-1026 or 402-440-0304.
Clements reported that Kansas is initiating a program called Water Tap, which is a voluntary incentive-based program to retire irrigated acres in northwest Kansas, including the Republican River tributary Prairie Dog Creek. A landowner can retire part or all of a water right - it must be an active right used in at least six of the last 10 years - based on historic consumptive use.
The maximum payment would be $2,000 per acre-foot of consumptive use. Clements said the goal is to retire 3,500 a-f of water rights in the Prairie Dog watershed over the next five years.
He also reported that Harlan County Lake was at elevation 1946.79 (1,946.79 feet above sea level) on Wednesday and about one foot into the flood pool.
The Nov. 7 federal Bureau of Reclamation report of lake levels in Kansas and Nebraska listed Harlan County Lake as holding 334,676 a-f of water at the end of October, which was 135 percent of average and 107 percent of full.
Clements said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages lake operations, plans to make releases to lower the elevation and maintain it at about 1946 throughout the winter. "The corps has been working with us and patiently delaying water releases while we have been working on the deep disking project (of islands) in the river by Franklin," he said.
Disking, vegetation spraying and debris removal are parts of the Eastern Republican River Riparian Project to enhance the river's capacity. It's sponsored by Twin Valley Weed Management Area.
