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Panhandle of Ne. | Brian, we cannot drill new wells just replacement. We are limited as to how much water we can pump also. About 4-5 years ago we were forced to put meters on all wells. Now, the SPNRD [south platte natural resources district] comes out once a year and reads the meters, sends us a letter to tell us how much we used the last pumping season and how much we have left on the 3 year allocation. 2015 will be the last year of the current allocation period. This allocation period we were allowed to pump 14 acre inches per year or 42 acre inches for this allocation period. They will not come shut the wells off if you use more than allocated, they will just take it off of next years allocation. Fortunately, we are staying within the yearly allocation at this time. The SPNRD will also allow us to use any carry over water, if we don't use the 42 inches, into the next allocation period. I don't think this is completely bad having to stay within the 3 year allocation, just wish they would go by a per well allocation instead. I have all the logs when our wells were drilled. We have 2 wells that the NRD has been checking the depth on every year since they were drilled. I also have a local drilling company come measure some of our wells also. With the current rate of depletion, some years the wells actually rise some, most of our wells are good for another 1000 plus years. Now, we are on what is called the south table, basically means we aren't in a draw/valley, and our wells are much deeper, less draw down and much more standing water available than the wells in the valley/draws have. I wish they would do the comparison, as I have done, on a per well basis and allow us to pump more water, if needed on a drought/hot year, on wells showing at least 500 years of water left. Most of the valley wells are only dug 150 feet deep +/- and don't have the water available as we do on the table. I believe the allocation of 42" per allocation period is about right on those wells.
Our land will bring 3-5k per acre depending on the particular place. Corn yields will go from 150-225 per acre depending on the year. When we left Tx., we didn't leave the weather issues behind. We can get some tremendous storms that will build on the front range and move across us. I have been around hail/wind storms my entire life but, had never seen softball size hail like we had in 2013! We can also have issue with late spring frost and late summer/early fall frost. We plant 92-98 day corn. Lot of dryland wheat planted in our area. Quite a bit of 70 bu dryland wheat last year. This country is known for its ability to have incredible dryland wheat.
The thing that was an eye opening deal was we are always a neg basis on corn whereas we could count on a pos basis in Tex. | |
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Ogalla Aquifer in Nebraska
