LINCOLN- In marking the merger of two water-focused state agencies, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen on Wednesday said he and other farmers “messed up” in managing water resources. “What’s really, really important is we go forward, that we all just have the courage to say the way it is,” said Pillen, whose family runs a Columbus-based hog operation and who became the state’s first farmer-governor in more than a century. “I’m a farmer. We don’t want to admit that we messed up, but we did. We’ve over-applied fertilizer, we’ve over-applied water, and we drove nitrates down into the ground, and we have nitrates in groundwater.”

Adding that it was time to “stop talking about it,” Pillen said a motivation behind merging two state agencies focused on water resources was to lean on new technology and scientific advancements to “educate all farmers in Nebraska so that we fix the problem and start having measurable breakthrough results.” With that, the governor signed Legislative Bill 317, which he pushed and State Sen. Tom Brandt of Plymouth helped carry over the finish line. The law combines the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy (DEE) and the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) into the new Department of Water, Energy and Environment (DWEE).

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