(1) The Chief Water Officer may grant and administer permits to public water suppliers: (a) To locate, develop, and maintain ground water supplies through water wells or other means and to transport water into the area to be served; and (b) to continue existing use of ground water and the transportation of ground water into the area served. (2) For purposes of the Municipal and Rural Domestic Ground Water Transfers Permit Act and sections 46-651 to 46-655 , (a) public water supplier shall mean a city, village, municipal corporation, metropolitan utilities district, rural water district, natural resources district, irrigation district, reclamation district, or sanitary and improvement district which supplies or intends to supply water to inhabitants of cities, villages, or rural areas for domestic or municipal purposes and (b) water well shall have the same meaning as in section 46-601.01 .
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 46-638
Terms, defined; permits to public water suppliers; Chief Water Officer; powers
Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case PONDEROSA RIDGE LLV v. Banner County (1996)
Most recently applied in Central Nebraska Public Power & Irrigation District v. Persons Identified as Registered Irrigation Well Owners (July 2005)
Laws 1963, c. 276, § 1, p. 829; Laws 1980, LB 643, § 2; Laws 1993, LB 131, § 18; Laws 2000, LB 900, § 177; Laws 2025, LB317, § 178.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Nebraska Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Nebraska statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.