Land Treatment

Citizen’s Monitoring Committee

The Clean Harbors Citizen’s Monitoring Committee, a special committee overseen by the South Platte NRD, provides third party oversight of the Kimball incinerator’s operations.  The consultant that the committee works with is Jacque Riener of Southwest Environmental Engineering (McCook, NE).  Riener keeps the committee up to date with quarterly reports, reviews permits and compliance issues with the facility and NDEQ and EPA.

The Kimball CHESI facility serves the entire United States as a storage and treatment facility for a variety of industrial waste utilizing a 45,000 ton-per-year fluidized bed incinerator. The state-of-the-art thermal oxidation unit ('"TOU") is capable of maximum destruction efficiencies of hazardous waste and is able to handle an extremely wide variety of feeds.

Citizens’ Monitoring Committee members include Dennis Armstrong, Peggy Sanders, Greg Robinson, Steve Diemoz, Jim Johnson (SPNRD Director, Subdistrict 2) and Galen Wittrock, SPNRD General Manager.  The committee meets about 6-8 times a year in Kimball

Ground Water Runoff Program

Established in 1978, the SPNRD Ground Water Runoff Program is in place to prevent improper irrigation runoff and maintain ground water supplies.

In order to conserve water and to prevent inefficient or improper runoff, each person who uses ground water irrigation is required by the Nebraska Ground Water Management and Protection Act to prevent the runoff of water used in irrigation.

The SPNRD program, which meets the Act requirements, addresses the standards of inefficient or improper runoff of ground water used in irrigation, procedures to prevent, control, and abate such runoff, measures for the construction, modification, extension, or operation of remedial measures to prevent, control or abate runoff of ground water used in irrigation.

Soil Protection

When soil erosion becomes a threat to neighboring property, Districts have the legal authority to mediate a solution under the Erosion and Sediment Control Act. The Act was developed in 1986 when the Nebraska Legislature recognized serious erosion and sedimentation problems throughout the state. At the time a number of land-disturbing activities had caused excessive wind erosion and water runoff and accelerated the process of soil erosion and sediment deposition. That resulted in the pollution of the waters of the state and damage to domestic, agricultural, industrial, recreational, fish and wildlife, and other resources.

The state’s goal was to strengthen and extend erosion and sediment control activities and programs of the state for both rural and urban lands, to improve water quality, and to establish a statewide, comprehensive, and coordinated erosion and sediment control program to reduce damage from wind erosion and storm water runoff, to retard nonpoint pollution from sediment and related pollutants, and to conserve and protect land, air, and other resources of the state.

Implemented through the Director of Natural Resources and the Nebraska Natural Resources Commission, the legislation specified the program would be carried out by the natural resources districts in cooperation with counties, municipalities, and other entities.

In 1987, the SPNRD board of directors adopted the District Erosion and Sediment Control Program, designed to reduce soil erosion in the District to tolerable levels.