Lincoln, NE - April 5, 2018 - North Platte Natural Resources District announced today that it will receive $126,277 from the Nebraska Environmental Trust for the "DAMP Project". The Trust Board announced funding for the project at its meeting on April 5, 2018 in Lincoln. This is the final year of award. The project is one of the 105 projects receiving $18,301,819 in grant awards from the Nebraska Environmental Trust this year. Of these, 66 were new applications and 39 are carry-over projects.

The North Platte Natural Resources District (NRD) has always striven to collect the best available data to inform water management decisions. Similarly, the NRD has seen from past projects that landowners make demonstrably better farm-management decisions when they have their actual water-use data available to them. Because of time and distance to wells, both NRD staff and producers must expend considerable resources to gather this information manually. The telemetry project would expand the Data Access and Monitoring Partnership (DAMP), a partnership between the District and the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources, which incorporated a telemetry pilot project to determine the viability of telemetry as both a water management and data gathering tool. The AMCi MeterEye telemetry units offer to all parties a technology that will provide a reliable, accurate way to receive crop water use data while eliminating the man hours and resource expenditures previously needed to retrieve the data. The data will in turn be used by the NRD to improve the Western Water Use and Management Model (WWUMM). WWUMM is used by the District in evaluating if water management decisions in comparison to its Integrated Management Plan (IMP).

The Nebraska Legislature created the Nebraska Environmental Trust in 1992. Using revenue from the Nebraska Lottery, the Trust has provided over $289 million in grants to over 2,000 projects across the state. Anyone - citizens, organizations, communities, farmers and businesses can apply for funding to protect habitat, improve water quality and establish recycling  programs in Nebraska. The Nebraska Environmental Trust works to preserve, protect and restore our natural resources for future generations.

David Wolf

North Platte NRD

Information/Education Coordinator

P.O. Box 280

100547 Airport RD

Scottsbluff, NE 69363-0280

(308) 632-2749 – Office

(308) 660-5830 – Cell

dwolf [at] npnrd.org

www.npnrd.org