EPA violation filed over slow response to mitigate damage to Sandhills stream

LINCOLN — A federal environmental agency has cited a Sandhills rancher for failing to mitigate and halt damage created when the rancher drained a temporary lake into the Snake River without permission.

A deluge of approximately 1.6 million tons of sand and sediment washed into the spring-fed creek after Dick Minor of Gordon dug a 2.5-mile-long ditch to drain floodwaters off a hay meadow, an event followed by heavy rains.

The erosion turned a 3-mile stretch of the typically narrow and deep channel of the Snake River — a remote site for trout fishing and canoe trips — into a flat, sandy plain like the Platte River.

Unleashing such a deluge into a stream without obtaining permission is a violation of the federal Clean Water Act.

Visible 30 miles away

Evidence of the influx of sediment was visible 30 miles away in Merritt Reservoir, southwest of Valentine, which is partly fed by the Snake.

The sand that washed into the creek would be enough to fill an area the size of a football field about 540 feet deep.

A year ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reached an agreement with Minor and Cherry County to immediately halt the “illegal discharges” in the Snake River and restore the channel of the creek “to the extent technically feasible.”

EPA spokesman Ben Washburn, in a recent email, said Minor and the county submitted a mitigation plan last September. 

‘Notice of violation’

But in February, the EPA issued a “Notice of Violation” after required steps to abate the ongoing erosion hadn’t been taken. An aerial photograph submitted by a local pilot appears to show little has been done since the washout in the spring of 2020.

Washburn said Friday that at this point, enforcement actions, such as fines, aren’t being contemplated. 

“Right now we’re just focusing on getting the work done,” he said.

 Washburn added that “due to the severity of the impacts and the complexity of the restoration,” EPA has enlisted an engineer to review the plan proposed by Minor and Cherry County. 

The EPA official said he had no details about a visit by EPA officials this week to the Minor Ranch, which is west of Nebraska Highway 61 along the Snake River.

EPA just left

Minor, when reached Friday morning, said that the EPA had just left his ranch and that there had been an agreement to “do another little deal,” which he described as building a “berm” to halt erosion from the drainage ditch.

“I talked to them. Everything sounded good,” he said. “Me and the county are getting along good, and we’re going to get it fixed up like they want it.”

Minor added that the agreement will likely have to be approved by Region 7 of the EPA, which is headquartered in Kansas City.

The rancher did not say why the mitigation work hadn’t been done yet, but he said in his opinion, the Snake River hadn’t been damaged or altered except on his ranch.

‘Neighbors OK with it’

“The neighbors are OK with it,” he said. “People need to mind their own business.”

Minor said he drained the flooded hay meadow to restore hay production there, to feed his cattle.

“I got to make a living,” he said.

As for aerial photographs of the damage that have been provided to the Nebraska Examiner, he said if an airplane flies “too low” over his place, “he might not have an airplane.”

Cherry County Attorney Eric Scott said he was not aware of the violation order in February but said the county has “acted in good faith and done everything we’ve been asked to resolve the situation.”

County road crews, he said, had worked to drain water off a flooded county road in the area of the Minor Ranch but had not been involved in digging a drainage ditch to the Snake River.

The EPA agreement in June 2021 stated that Minor and the county would share in the cost of the mitigation work.

Roads, highways and pastures were flooded in Cherry County after a “bomb cyclone” hit Nebraska in the spring of 2019, an event that caused damaging flooding along the lower Niobrara River, Platte River and elsewhere. Scott said Cherry County spent $11 million to restore roads in that Sandhills county due to the flooding.