The Upper Republican Natural Resources District is based in Imperial, Neb. and is comprised of Dundy, Chase and Perkins Counties in the southwest corner of the state. The Upper Republican is a diverse District, having approximately 450,000 acres of land that is irrigated with groundwater, 390,000 dryland acres and 887,000 acres of rangeland. There is a significant amount of groundwater within the District - approximately 150 million acre feet as estimated by the United States Geological Survey, and more groundwater and surface water on average flow out of the District annually than flow into it.

Despite the abundance of groundwater in the District, it has taken many steps over the years to preserve water. In 1978-1979 it became the first NRD in the state and possibly the first government entity in the U.S. to regulate groundwater use, setting an allocation of 20 inches per acre. Since that time, the allocation has dropped 35% and other rules have been adopted to preserve water for future generations and slow groundwater declines, such as a well-drilling moratorium approved in 1997, a first for the state. More recent rules changes including steep penalties for those who over-use their water use allocations and restrictions on how much unused allocation from previous years, commonly called "carry-forward," can be used during an allocation period.

In 2013, the District began operating a project that was a precursor to NCORPE. The Rock Creek Augmentation Project in Dundy County began operating in February, 2013 and prevented tens of thousands of irrigated acres in the District from being shut down to maintain compact compliance. Nearly 5,000 acres of irrigated farmland were purchased by the District and retired from irrigation to offset the water being pumped and piped into Rock Creek, which flows into the North Fork of the Republican River near Parks, Neb. The project is about one-third the size of NCORPE. It has 10 augmentation wells instead of 30 at NCORPE and is able to produce 20,000-23,000 acre feet of water annually instead of NCORPE's 60,000-65,000 acre feet.