Sandhills offer Nebraska underground water
by Duane Leibhart
Some eastern Nebraska
residents are losing sleep
pondering how to utilize huge
underground water supplies in
Nebraska's water-rich sandhills.
Biologist Gilbert L. Adrian told
an audience at Bessey Hall
earlier this week.
Adrian, from Hastings
College, joined Nebraska Game
and Parks Commission
Biologist Bruce McCarraher in
discussing the ecology of
Nebraska's sandhills lakes.
The Hastings professor said
the sandhills are one of the
world's largest natural aquifers
(water bearers). Underground
water in the 20,000 sq. mile
sandhill's area has been
estimated at 1,678,800,000
acre ft., he said, enough to
cover the entire state in 18 feet
of water.
Water used in irrigation in
the sandhills is not enough to
affect the recharge rate there,
he said, which is estimated at
12,000,000 acre ft. per year. In
eastern Nebraska, on the other
hand, irrigators are using up
more underground water than
NWU
schedules
visitation
meeting
UNL campus residents
aren't the only people in
Lincoln complaining about
housing and visitation
regulations.
Nine hundred of Nebraska
Wesleyan's 1,200 students live
on campus and the Wesleyan
visitation policy is more
restrictive than UNL's,
according to Charles Albers,
vice-president of the
Centennial Hall Governing
Council.
Wesleyan President Vance
D. Rogers has received the
power to administer his
college's open hours program
from the Board of Governors
and will meet with students,
alumni and faculty this week
to determine a new policy,
according to Bob Bartle, editor
of The Wesleyan , the college's
newspaper.
Present policy permits a
maximum of 20 hours weekly
for open house; guests must
sign in and be accompanied by
a resident at all times, Albers
said. The hall's resident
assistant must be in the dorm,
but policy does not require a
student assistant on the floor
or a scheduled function, as
UNL policy states.
Hopefully, Bartle said,
Rogers will determine a policy
similar to the Hastings College ,
program which permits up to
eight hours a day visitation,
with a maximum of 40 hours
weekly.
Albers sees the reaction of
donors as the main force
preventing implementation of a
liberalized policy; the school
could lose money from alumni,
especially those out-state, he
said.
Concern over the security of
the dormitories and the
position of Wesleyan as a
Methodist institution are other
arguments that have been used
against inter-visitation, Albers
said.
In determining open house
hours , 75 per cent of the hall
residents must vote, with a
two-thirds majority approval.
Visitation regulations also
apply to Wesleyan's Greek
houses.
is naturally recharged, Adrian
said.
McCarraher estimated there
are 1,640 sandhills lakes over
ten acres in area with an
additional 850 natural
permanent lakes of less than
ten acres. The average depth of
the 1,640 lakes is about 3.2 ft.
The sandhills have one of
the highest concentrations of
underground lakes in the
world, he said. Although in the
west sandhills have no outflow,
there are many lakes
maintained by overland run-off
water, the biologist said.
Some of these highly
alkaline lakes are almost devoid
of plant and animal life, he
said. At present, 58 per cent of
sandhill lakes support fish life.
According to McCarraher,
Sacramento perch and the
fathead minnow seem to be the
most suited to water with high
alkaline levels. Sandhill lakes
support 20 species of
warmwater fish life but the
water is too warm for trout,
the biologist said.
"We could single out 15 to
20 per cent of these that are
real good for ducks," he said.
"It seems the ducks know why
these lakes are better than the
others, but we don't," the
biologist said.
He said literature shows
Nebraska Indians didn't
frequent the sandhills much.
This he tied to the scarcity of
buffalo there. The biologist
said there may have been grass
fires that burned off large
grazing areas.
UNL zoologist Harvey
Gunderson, speaking from the
audience, said sandhills lakes
dry up in a sever drouth, so
buffalo herds stayed close to
waterways like the Platte
River. Estimates of buffalo
population in Nebraska
indicate there were about 60
million," but I would guess it
was 10 million at the tops,"
the zoologist said.
Early buffalo population
figures obtained by using
numbers of buffalo around the
Platte for a guide, he said,
which wouldn't be
representative of other
Nebraska areas. "Contrary to
what many people think, I
don't believe there were ever
wall to wall buffalo in
Nebraska," Gunderson said.
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manuals recommend.
Amoco is specially formulated for your new car's anti
pollution engine. Made to help it run better, longer. And
Amoco can double the life of your tail pipe and muffler
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longer, too.
That's why more new car buyers use Standard gasolines
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gasolines at Standard. All the time.
So now that you've got that new car. use the gasoline
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You've got a new car We've got a new car gasoline.
You expect more from Standard and you get it.
) Standard Oil Division of American Oil Company
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9. 1971
THE DAILY NEBRASKAN
PArtP 7
