Smart water technology will keep Nebraska's rates affordable

In Nebraska, water isn't just a utility — it's the backbone of everything we do. It grows our crops, sustains our livestock, fills the glasses of families in towns of 500 people and cities of 500,000. We think about water differently here than folks might in other parts of the country, because we've built our entire way of life around it. And right now, that way of life is under more pressure than most people realize.

Agriculture drives Nebraska’s economy — the state ranks among the nation’s top producers of beef, corn and soybeans, and virtually all of it depends on reliable water access. But it’s not just the farms. The small towns and rural communities that surround them depend on water systems that are aging, underfunded and increasingly strained by the kind of weather extremes we’ve been seeing along the Platte and Missouri river corridors.

Drive through rural Nebraska and you’ll find small water systems — some serving just a few hundred people — struggling to maintain aging pipes and treatment facilities with limited staff and tight budgets. With nothing in reserve, a single failure is a crisis, and those costs don’t stay contained — they get passed to ratepayers, farmers and families already watching every dollar. Water rates have been climbing for years because leaky, underperforming systems effectively bill customers for water that never arrives. Reactive maintenance piles emergency costs onto already-strained budgets. That’s not sustainable.

The infrastructure challenge doesn’t end at the farm gate. It spans a spectrum — from rural communities struggling to keep aging systems running, to fast-growing suburban and exurban counties racing to build ahead of demand. In Sarpy and Cass Counties, among the fastest-growing areas in Nebraska, the pressure isn’t about maintaining what exists — it’s about building new water and wastewater capacity right and keeping it affordable as growth continues. The decisions made now will shape costs and service quality for decades. That’s where the Water Infrastructure Modernization Act — WIMA — comes in, helping communities at every point on that spectrum invest in technology that makes those decisions durable.

The question isn’t whether Nebraska needs to invest in water infrastructure — it’s whether we do it smartly or keep throwing money at the same old problems and expecting different results.

That’s why WIMA deserves serious attention. The bipartisan bill would help water utilities — including the kind of small, rural systems that define much of this state — adopt technologies already delivering results nationwide: smart meters that give utilities and customers real-time data on water use, leak detection systems that pinpoint problems before they become sinkholes or service outages, and predictive analytics that help operators schedule maintenance before a pipe fails.

For a state like Nebraska, these tools carry real weight from one end of that spectrum to the other. Precision water management is already part of how Nebraska farmers operate — irrigation efficiency has been a priority here for decades because it’s had to be. WIMA extends that same logic to the broader water and wastewater infrastructure every community depends on. When a utility can fix leaks faster, reduce operating costs and strengthen resilience against severe weather, everyone in that service area benefits.

Smarter technology also breaks the cycle of waste and reactive spending — reducing water loss, lowering operating costs and keeping rates manageable for families and agricultural operations that can’t absorb endless increases. Research shows digital water management solutions can reduce the cost of building weather resilience by as much as 40 percent, and utilities that have adopted advanced leak detection have cut water loss by nearly half. Those savings translate directly to the people paying the bills.

Nebraska has benefited from federal water investment in recent years, and we shouldn't take that for granted. But the lesson of every infrastructure program is that money alone doesn't solve the problem — execution does. WIMA ensures those dollars go to work modernizing systems rather than propping up outdated ones for another decade.

Senators Deb Fischer and Pete Ricketts have shown they understand Nebraska’s unique water needs, and I’d encourage them to take a hard look at this legislation. WIMA isn't a big-government program — it's a practical tool for helping communities help themselves, which is about as Nebraska as it gets. Our water systems should be as efficient and resilient as the people who depend on them. This bill moves us in that direction, and I hope our senators will help push it across the finish line.

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Michelle Andahl has lived in Sarpy County for over two decades and is a community development and public policy professional with more than 20 years of experience working at the intersection of economic development, local government, and community engagement in Nebraska.