The Environmental Protection Agency is currently reviewing a new plan for restoring a Sandhills stream damaged by an unauthorized deluge of sand three years ago.
More than 1.6 million tons of sand and sediment — enough to cover a football field to a depth of about 540 feet — was unleashed when a local rancher, with the help of Cherry County, drained a flooded hay meadow into the Snake River, south of Merriman.
After the county dug a drainage ditch along a county road, rancher Dick Minor extended the ditch an additional 2.5 miles to the spring-fed creek.
The new flow and heavy rains eroded a mountain of sand into the stream, turning a normally narrow waterway into a flat, sandy plain — similar to the Platte River — for about three miles downstream. New sediment was noticed about 30 miles downstream, where the Snake empties into Merritt Reservoir.
The Snake is one of the state’s few trout streams, and it hosts a small number of canoe trips through a remote area of the Sandhills.
Last month, Cherry County approved a contract with Mainelli Wagner & Associates of Lincoln to halt the flow of water into the Snake from the drainage ditch and then to provide a plan, and oversight, of the construction of “detention structures” and replanting of grass and trees.
$66,900 contract
The three-phase contract calls for spending of $66,900, to be shared by the county and the rancher, as well as an estimate of construction costs.
Both the county and Minor have been cited by the EPA for violating the federal Clean Water Act by not obtaining permission for the discharge into the waterway.
The county and rancher signed an agreement in June 2021 to provide a plan within 60 days to remediate the damage, restore — to the extent possible — the previous flow in the Snake River, and mitigate for “lost river functions.”
But in February 2022, the EPA issued a “notice of violation” against the two parties for failing to promptly comply with the order.
In November, the EPA indicated that it had enlisted a contractor “with the expertise” to review a proposed work plan for damage it termed complex and severe.
At that time, an EPA spokesman said the agency hoped to have a work plan soon and would share the plan once approved.
‘Complicated hydrological issues’
Last week, the spokesman, Ben Washburn, said the agency and consultants it hired are currently reviewing the latest work plan.
When asked what happened to past proposals, Washburn said that the project involves “complicated hydrological issues” and that consultants had to be hired.
The Mainelli group, in a February letter to the county, indicated that it would submit a new work plan by a March 24 deadline, and then have a estimate in late April of construction costs to install pipes and detention structures and conduct other mitigation work.
Cherry County Attorney Eric Scott, when reached by the Examiner, declined to comment other than to say that the county was in full compliance with the EPA’s directives.
Calls to Dick Minor and Martin DeNaeyer, the chairman of the Cherry County Board, were not returned.
