County board to wait until water use model is complete
It’s often said that the “third time is the charm,” however, it took a total of four tries on Monday morning for the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners to pass a resolution placing a moratorium on certain conditional use permit applications with the county’s Planning and Zoning office.
Item 3 on the agenda was discussion and consideration of passing Resolution 1180, which places a moratorium on applications with the zoning office for conditional use permits (CUP) for facilities described as “commercial large water users.”
In introducing the agenda item, Commission Chairman Rich Nelson said the resolution was in response to a CUP application filed by Synergen Green Energy for a proposed ammonia production plant west of Aurora. Following a three-hour meeting of the county’s Joint Planning and Zoning Commission in March, the application was given a negative recommendation but the commissioners get the final say on the matter. They are scheduled to make a decision on a public hearing date for the application at next Monday’s meeting.
“You still have the issue before us about Synergen because they have already filed their conditional use permit,” Nelson explained. “But some concerns have been made and expressed that if something would happen there, others might come in and have a large water usage as well... I think all of us wish that the study that we had started with Aurora and the (Upper Big Blue) NRD had been done before we received a conditional use permit (application). That’s why we thought it might be appropriate for us to do a moratorium just to let people know that’s kind of the direction that we’re taking.”
Nelson indicated that a temporary ban on such applications was in keeping with a similar moratorium which was placed on applications for wind farms several years ago.
In response to a question from County Auditor Pat Sandberg who was in the meeting, the board began discussing the definition of a large water user and eventually decided that language defining that term should be added to the resolution.
The matter was tabled and the board went on to deal with other agenda items while Planning and Zoning Director Hillary Betka went down the hall to her office to amend the resolution to include the definition of a large water user as any commercial operation large enough to require a permit from the NRD.
Following the board’s meeting with preservation architect Jerry Berggren regarding the proposed courthouse renovation and restoration project (see the article on Page A2), the board again took up the issue of the revised resolution. Betka said she had added to the final paragraph of the resolution the words “requiring a permit from the NRD.”
However, Commissioner John Thomas pointed out that the resolution did not say anything about a CUP, so Betka went back to her office to add that language to the document.
After the board dealt with another agenda item, Betka returned with updated copies of the resolution which included adding the acronym “CUP” to the sentence dealing with applications.
A statement by Thomas and others that CUP should be written out as “conditional use permit” to avoid confusion, sent Betka back to her office once again to come back with copies of the revised document for each commissioner.
The final version of the document states: “(B)e it resolved by the county board commissioners of Hamilton County, Nebraska, that a moratorium on accepting any new commercial large water conditional use permit applications requiring a permit from the Natural Resource District be hereby invoked and approved. Said moratorium will end upon completion of groundwater study unless extended or rescinded by the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners by resolution.”
The resolution passed on a unanimous vote.
Deed books to be scanned
In what was described as in-part a safety issue, the board also voted Monday to secure the services of MIPS Microfilming to scan the County Clerk’s large and heavy deed books which are often accessed by county employees and members of the public. Clerk Jill DeMers said she had previously attempted to fund the project with ARPA COVID relief funds but had been turned down.
The safety aspect of the request, as explained by DeMers, has to do with the fact that the heavy books are stored on high shelves in the vault in her office and must be accessed using a ladder. She said members of the public often come in and want to see the books. She said in the past they have been allowed to go into the vault and get the books for making copies. She said the books are accessed several times each day.
DeMers said the bid for scanning the deed books and other miscellaneous books in the vault (with the exception of the mortgage books) is nearly $18,000, which was about $10,000 less than the previous estimate. She proposed that the funds for the project come from the Inheritance Tax Fund.
Thomas and others expressed concern about the public going into the vault and using the ladder and DeMers was instructed to not allow that but to make a list of the books needed and ask County Business Manager Pat Shaw or the custodian to get the books down.
The request was approved unanimously with the stipulation that the public not be allowed to use the ladder, effective immediately.
Asphalt project approved
In an agenda item from the County Highway Department, the commission approved an application to Rep. Adrian Smith’s office for federal funding to put asphalt paving on a six-mile stretch of County Road 6 between Highway 14 and W Road.
Noting that the project is “a huge want” by many in the county, Highway Supt. Jeremy Brandt said the cost of going from gravel to asphalt is about $1 million per mile and money from the state is hard to come by. The funding would need to be matched at 20 percent by the county, but Brandt said since the money would not be available until next year, that would give the county time to come up with the match money.
He said a law passed by Congress allows each congressman to award funding to 15 projects in his or her district. Brandt said time was running out to make the application by last Friday noon, so he met with Nelson and Thomas to get their approval before submitting the request.
While he admits there is “a minuscule chance” the funding will be received, he believed it was worth a try because of the importance of the project.