NORFOLK — In Texas, the law says that farmers own the water under their fields. In Nebraska, they do not. Within the confines of the state’s 23 natural resources districts, “the water belongs to the citizens of the state,” Stan Staab said. “It’s a shared resource.” How that legal framework plays out in the northeast part of the nation’s leading irrigating state during a major drought will be determined, in part, by the outcome of a hearing held by the Lower Elkhorn NRD.

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