KEARNEY - Nebraska has no power under the South Platte River Compact to make Colorado send more upstream river water its way, Colorado officials told the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday. Centennial State leaders, filing their official response to Nebraska’s July 16 interstate lawsuit tied to its 1894 Perkins County Canal revival, mostly argue that claims Colorado is violating the 1923 accord are premature at best. But they declare in several places in their 42-page response that the compact neither requires Colorado to always ensure a minimum spring and summer South Platte flow at the Nebraska line nor allows room to argue that Colorado must curtail Front Range surface water or groundwater use to do so.

“Nebraska has no right to interfere with Colorado's uses in the Upper Section,” meaning stretches of the river west of Colorado’s Logan-Washington county line, said the response filed by state Attorney General Philip J. Weiser.

“Further, if Nebraska’s concerns include any Upper Section plans for (water) development, Colorado has the right to fully develop the Upper Section.” Nebraska’s lawsuit in the nation’s highest court — which has direct jurisdiction over disputes between states — was filed 3½ years after then-Gov. Pete Ricketts announced the Cornhusker State would invoke its compact right to revive and finish the Perkins canal.

Pioneers in Perkins County, which split off from Keith County in 1887, dug 16 of an intended 65 miles of canal in Sedgwick County, Colorado, before exhausted finances forced them to abandon the effort. Efforts by Keith County business leaders to revive the canal after World War I — this time bypassing their southern neighbor — helped preserve Nebraska’s right to finish the job in the compact ratified by Congress in 1926.

But Nebraska made no moves to follow up on the idea until a pair of short-lived 1980s explorations. One of them, by the North Platte-based Twin Platte Natural Resources District, is echoed in the current revival plan.

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