Colorado Lawyer Normal Phil Weiser despatched a letter to county commissioners in northeastern Colorado earlier this week pledging to defend their rights if Nebraska tries to sentence land for the proposed Perkins County Canal Challenge.
Six landowners in Sedgwick County, the place the South Platte River flows out of the state, obtained notices of condemnation from the state of Nebraska on Jan. 17, providing $1.4 million for about 650 acres of land, based on Nebraska Public Media.
The landowners got 90 days to promote or face eminent area.
“We’re in a brand new chapter, there was a shift,” Lawyer Normal Phil Weiser informed The Colorado Solar on Friday. “I had hoped it will by no means come to this, however because it occurs, we’re not within the hypothetical, ‘what may they do, I hope they don’t do that’ world. We’ve moved into ‘they’re actually doing this.’”
Nebraska has been inching towards constructing the canal since April 2022, when the state legislature accepted the $500 million mission, citing fears about Colorado’s elevated water use.
The proposed canal would divert water from the South Platte River to a storage facility on the Nebraska aspect of the state line.
The South Platte River Compact, ratified by the governors of Colorado and Nebraska in 1923, authorizes Nebraska to construct the canal and use eminent area to take action. Nebraska had tried to construct the canal as soon as earlier than the compact within the Nineties, the grassed-over scar of which might nonetheless be seen paralleling Interstate 76 via the nook of the state.
However Weiser says the concept of utilizing eminent area in one other state is “novel,” and one thing his workplace is able to problem Nebraska on in courtroom.
“Often you will have Colorado utilizing eminent area in Colorado, perhaps you will have the federal authorities utilizing the facility of eminent area. However one other state utilizing the facility of eminent area in a unique state, that’s a really totally different scenario,” Weiser mentioned. He added that if the 2 states do enter litigation he expects it to go to the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
Colorado has frowned upon the mission since its inception, however took a barely extra backseat method in the course of the first couple years of planning. A spokesperson for Gov. Jared Polis referred to as the mission a “bad-faith try and undermine a century-long profitable compact,” and a “expensive boondoggle” for Nebraska taxpayers when the mission was first accepted.
Weiser mentioned that when Nebraska began appropriating funds for the mission he started making journeys to northeastern Colorado to “temporary” folks within the space, nonetheless beneath the impression that it was unlikely to occur.
“I mentioned, we’re going to be watching intently and getting ready for the chance, however I additionally mentioned I believe this feels extra like a political stunt. It doesn’t make sense,” Weiser mentioned.
Upon receiving Nebraska’s first official analysis roughly a yr later, in March 2023, Colorado’s state engineer despatched a response that basically mentioned: Go forward, however you’re not going to search out the water you’re hoping for. The engineer’s response, with in depth enter from the Lawyer Normal’s Workplace, was not meant to be understood as “a tough no,” then-state engineer Kevin Rein informed The Colorado Solar in 2023.
However Weiser’s letter Tuesday was much less ambiguous. Nebraska’s pursuit of the canal mission is one thing that his workplace “is intently engaged with — and against,” Weiser wrote. He threatened authorized motion if Nebraska continued to pursue the mission, and inspired Sedgwick County landowners to seek the advice of with attorneys, who might advise them on condemnation proceedings.
Farmers within the Republican River basin, which stretches from the northeastern nook to south of Burlington on the Japanese Plains, just lately obtained $30 million in federal funding to dry up 17,000 acres of agricultural land in compliance with the Republican River Compact, a separate water contract, with the intention to meet a important deadline supplying water to Kansas.
