Voicing concern with Synergen’s NRD water request

Dear Editor:
In central Nebraska we have been blessed with good soils and underground water that we need to raise abundant crops. 
In 1969 the Nebraska legislature formed a system of Natural Resource Districts that would allow these districts to monitor and control the use of this resource instead of the State of Nebraska. Our NRD (Upper Big Blue) set a 1978 water level to trigger controls once the water level went below that level. This past year we were just 3.6 feet above the trigger level. If the water falls below that level, farmers would be limited in the amount of water they can irrigate with for three years. After this time the issue would be readdressed by the NRD. 
The last NRD newsletter stated that farmers in our NRD used an average of 6.2 inches of water annually since 2007 to water our crops. 
Just west of Aurora, Synergen is requesting to use 3,000,000 gallons of water per day from the aquafer that is under us. This amount of water is over 40 times the average annual use of water that farmers have pumped since 2007. 
In effect, the Synergen plant would be using the same water as if it was irrigating 250 inches/year over the ground the plant would occupy, compared to the 6.2 inches/year average for the farm ground around it. 
If this is concerning to anyone else, the next NRD Water Committee meeting is Nov. 14th at 9 a.m. and the Upper Big Blue NRD Board meets on Nov. 2lst at 1:30 p.m. Both meetings are at the Upper Big Blue NRD building in York and both are open to the public. Please attend and voice your concerns about how a Synergen plant would affect our local ground water supply. 
Dave Hutsell,
Hampton