In its effort to continue to conserve and protect the natural resources of portions of Gage, Jefferson, Saline and Pawnee Counties, the Lower Big Blue Natural Resources District (NRD) has installed remote groundwater level monitoring equipment in several of the NRD’s dedicated groundwater level monitoring wells. 

In 2016 and 2017 the NRD drilled forty-three (43) dedicated groundwater level monitoring wells around the district.  The project focused on installing these wells within the city and town wellhead protection areas then expanded to install more wells in other aquifer areas in the district.  At that time, water level sensors were installed in each well to record the water level.  The data from the sensor could then be downloaded each time someone visited the well. 

Now, the NRD has just installed a telemetry device that connects to the current water level sensor already in the well.  The telemetry device records the water level readings and sends the data via cell signal to be viewed remotely from a website.  Water level readings are recorded twice a day and the data is uploaded once per day.  The telemetry devices were installed in the wells located within the wellhead protection areas of Beatrice, Cortland, Crete, Daykin, DeWitt, Friend, Pickrell, Swanton, Tobias, Western, and Wilber.  This will allow the NRD to closely monitor groundwater levels all year long.

The NRD has also partnered with the University of Nebraska Conservation and Survey Division (CSD) and the U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS) to install telemetry equipment in wells for the Villages of Dorchester and Plymouth and the City of Crete.  There are also plans, through a Nebraska Environmental Trust grant, to install telemetry equipment in ten (10) more NRD monitoring wells located in southern Jefferson and Gage Counties.  With the addition of the telemetry equipment in these wells, the NRD will have remote groundwater level readings for a good portion of the district.

The NRD will continue to manually measure all the wells in the NRD’s groundwater monitoring network in the spring and fall.  This includes a total of one hundred sixty-eight (168) wells spread throughout the district.  All the groundwater level data, from the manual readings to the telemetry data, can be viewed online at lbbnrd.net/groundwater.  The NRD greatly appreciates the cooperation with landowners who have allowed the NRD to install and collect data from all the wells throughout the district.