When rain and snow are plentiful, everyone gets to make withdrawals from the "water bank."
But during periods of drought, there is not enough water for everyone and hard choices must be made on who gets the most water, who gets less water and, perhaps, who gets none at all.
Students attending Tuesday's Children's Groundwater Festival learned those lessons from representatives of the National Drought Mitigation Center, which is part of the School of Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Youngsters from St. Paul Elementary were among the students who learned those lessons from Donna Woudenberg, Meghan Sittler and Deb Wood from the Drought Mitigation Center.
Woudenberg began the discussion by asking the students to estimate how much precipitation Central Nebraska receives in an average year.
The first guess or two -- starting with 500 inches -- would have turned this part of the state into a tropical rain forest. But with Woudenberg saying "lower" or "higher," depending on the answers, the students quickly zeroed in on the correct answer: an average of 24 inches per year.
The students said people in this part of the country get much of the water from the aquifer or groundwater, as well as rivers and lakes. Collectively, the St. Paul students said the aquifer, rivers and lakes are all replenished by precipitation that comes in the form of rain, snow, sleet, ice and even mist.
Before students arrived in the Central Community College classroom, the National Drought Mitigation team had written 10 possible uses for water on a whiteboard.
The uses were divided between urban, rural and environmental consumption. They included city factories, city lawns, city homes/schools, city swimming pools, city car washes, farmers' homes, farmers' crops, farmers' animals, wildlife water and wildlife habitat.
Students were then given picture cards that listed those 10 uses, followed by a cup with 24 beads that represented the 24 inches of precipitation this area typically receives in a year's time.
Five groups of students were then asked to apportion beads among the 10 uses. Each group apportioned the beads differently, but almost every use got at least a couple of beads.
Sittler then asked the St. Paul students to define drought, with one girl saying that drought happens when an area gets less precipitation.
He agreed and noted that even deserts -- already dry to begin with -- have periods of drought.
The next step was for each of the five groups to take cups with just 12 beads, half a normal year's precipitation, and again allocate them among the 10 water uses.
Once again, none of the five groups agreed precisely on the proper allocations. But each one of the five groups agreed on three areas: City lawns, swimming pools and car washes got no beads.
That left a little for factories, city homes/schools, farm homes, farm crops, farm animals, wildlife and wildlife habitat. However, the students said making those decisions was not easy.
The National Drought Mitigation people said they work with city officials to make those exact kinds of decisions. Like the students, they said making the final decisions was not easy.
For Heidi Townsend, the mother of St. Paul student Branson Townsend, the exercise brought back vivid members.
"Remember when we were in Fort Collins (Colorado)?" Townsend asked Branson.
Townsend said her family lived in Fort Collins for 13 years before moving to St. Paul in 2003. She recalled empty swimming pools, extremely scarce lawn watering and not being able to wash cars during a drought in Fort Collins.
Those were exactly the areas the other four tables of students had targeted for getting no water.
After the water banking session ended, Townsend noted that homes in Fort Collins were allowed to use a specific number of gallons of water each month.
Homeowners paid for that water use, but if they went over their allocation, homeowners paid a fine on top of their monthly water bill.
Townsend said homeowners also were fined if they used water for a prohibited use, such as washing cars.
"They had the water police," Townsend said of Fort Collins city officials.
She noted it also paid to be friendly with your neighbors. Townsend said homeowners who didn't like their neighbors were only too willing to report water violations.
