March 5, 2019
The Upper Republican Natural Resources District will have its annual public hearing for the Rock Creek Augmentation Project at its regular meeting Tuesday.
The meeting will be at 10 a.m. MT at the NRD office, 511 E. Fifth St., Imperial.
The Rock Creek Augmentation Project report is available at urnrd.org/resources .
According to the report, the project is “located near the headwaters of Rock Creek, a tributary of the north fork of the Republican River in Dundy County.”
It involves 5,919 acres of formerly irrigated land.
Its purpose is to help the state achieve Republican River Compact compliance while reducing the need to regulate surface water or prohibit groundwater pumping for irrigation. It was used for these purposes in the years 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017.
The NRD also used water from the NCORPE project in Lincoln County from 2014 to May 2017.
Water augmentation from Rock Creek and NCORPE was not needed in 2018. In 2018 only 47.3 acre-feet of water was pumped from Rock Creek to maintain the wells and other infrastructure of the project.
