The state's largest irrigation provider and owner of Lake McConaughy is taking a financial hit after years of low water flows into the massive reservoir. Now it's scrambling for more money. A roughly 70 percent dip in revenues from its chief moneymaker - hydropower - over the last five years has Holdrege-based Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District looking at new fees on groundwater irrigators and boaters on Big Mac, among other ideas. The financial situation isn't dire, thanks to reserves built up in the water-soaked 1990s, but it could get that way without more water and more revenue. "If this drought hangs on, we'll have to make changes in how we do business in three to five years," said district general manager Don Kraus.

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