Appropriations Committee Chair Voices Doubt About Canal Project
A leading state senator is expressing opposition to one of Gov. Pete Ricketts’ top priorities: setting aside $500 million to build a canal off the South Platte River.
State Sen. John Stinner of Gering, who chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee, said he cannot agree with earmarking that much in state funds for the Perkins County Canal.
However, Stinner, speaking last Wednesday, said he would support spending a smaller amount on a feasibility study for the project.
“This canal is a complicated, long-term project that deserves to be looked at,” the senator said.
But, he added, the $500 million that would be set aside for the canal — $400 million in cash reserve funds and $100 million in American Rescue Plan Act monies — could be put to better use now.
Stinner’s opposition to the $500 million earmark is a significant blow to the canal proposal. Ricketts and others in his administration have portrayed the long-forgotten canal as the only way for Nebraska to get all the water it is supposed to under a 99-year-old compact over the South Platte’s flows with the State of Colorado. The governor has said the project is urgent, citing water development plans in Colorado that he maintains will consume 90% of the South Platte’s flows. But officials have also said it might take up to a decade for the canal to be designed and built.
But a spokesman for Colorado’s governor told Nebraska Public Media last that the Perkins County Canal was a “canal to nowhere” and a “boondoggle” that would never be built.
The Appropriations Committee is putting together its final budget recommendations, as well as its final suggestions on how to spend Nebraska’s $1.04 billion allocation from ARPA. Debate on those proposals by the full state Legislature will come later in this year’s 60-day session.
This story was originally published by Nebraska Examiner, an editorially independent newsroom providing a hard-hitting, daily flow of news. Find more at nebraskaexaminer.com.
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