Smoke Over Water

Cry Baby Lierz,

The U.S. government. guaranteed the Indians water rights in 1854 you little prick head. Think your more important than they? Your biggest asshole in Brown County. Wake up before your run out of Brown County. Your nothing but a liar and a cheat so wake up while you have a chance.

The sheriff Lierz called to come to that meeting has since died. But the current Nemaha County sheriff, Richard Vernon, was on duty at the meeting that night. His assignment, he says, was to keep things in check if tempers flared.

After the Indians presented Simon as their candidate, the farmers needed someone to run for their side. Several men were nominated, but each time, the board apologetically declined the candidate because he didn't own land in the right place. It took half a dozen nominations before the farmers found a candidate who was qualified.

As board members were examining the rules, they discovered that Simon didn't own land in the proper district for his board seat. Another seat, an at-large post that Simon would have qualified for, was open — but that election wouldn't be on the docket until the next meeting.

"They all cheered," Williams says. "It was pretty blatant. And we didn't see the point of staying around, so we left."

A few moments after Williams and Simon left, though, the board decided they'd been wrong again. They had a few moments to squeeze in that at-large election after all.

Linda Lierz denies that anyone did anything underhanded.

Besides, racial tension is a part of living in the Brown and Nemaha counties.

"I was talking to my banker about this the other day, and he told me, 'They're red men. We're white men. There's always going to be a problem,'" says Lierz, who is from St. Louis. "I'd never thought about it like that before, but it's the truth." Getting along is rule No. 1 when it comes to the incestuous nature of small-town politics. Anytime you step into a city council meeting, you watch your mouth, because the people you deal with are your neighbors, your family and your business partners. There's no point in pretending that conflicts of interest don't exist — such as Rodney Lierz's position on the water board, which allows him to vote on a decision that will directly affect his livelihood.

"Is it a conflict? Sure it is, if we vote on it," says Dexter Davis, a lifelong farmer who is president of the Nemaha-Brown Water Board. "And when it comes to a vote, if it does, he can vote on it if he wants to, but that's either legal or it isn't. That's something the lawyers will have to deal with."

Board member Roger Ploeger's mother owns another parcel of land needed for the Kickapoo reservoir. Board member Wayne Hineger rents some of the land for his own farming operation.

But not every white person in Brown County is against the Kickapoo reservoir. With fewer than 2,000 people, the town of Horton is a sudden speed trap on Highway 20, where the Super Store gas station bills itself as home of the cheapest unleaded — and the best fried chicken — in town. Most Horton residents end their formal educations with high school diplomas, and quite a few work at the Golden Eagle Casino.

In fact, the casino is the biggest employer in Brown County. Emily Conklin estimates that at least 70 percent of its workers are not tribe members.

"If the Kickapoo picked up and left today, tomorrow we'd be the poorest county in the state," says Dale White, a lifelong Horton resident who, until early April, was Horton's mayor. White is also CEO of the Northeast Kansas Center for Health and Wellness and the acting administrator of Tri-County Manor nursing home.

In his four years as mayor, White was particularly responsive to Kickapoo tribal leaders. White says he was the first Horton mayor to have a sit-down meeting with the tribal council about the future of the two communities. And on several occasions, he flew with Cadue to Washington, D.C., to plead the Indians' case before legislators.

Two years ago, the Horton City Council made the sympathetic gesture of passing a resolution urging the water board to use its power of eminent domain to claim land for the reservoir.

"It's just a self-evident thing to do," White says. "They're neighbors, and there's intermarriage. We, of course, recognize their contributions to the economy, particularly now with the casinos Native Americans have added."

The casino may have given the citizens of Horton a reason to play nice. Before the Indians became the biggest employers in his county a decade ago, White says, they didn't get much support over the decades they were conducting ecological studies, reviewing land uses and completing building plans, all of which led to a mid-'90s agreement with the farmers who were on the water board back then. The Kickapoo say that agreement promised them the power to claim land through eminent domain, if necessary. Newspaper clippings from those years show politicians giving leaders such as Steve Cadue a smile and a firm handshake in support of the project. Landowners, however, presented environmental studies to show that the tribe could drill for water on other land. And with water levels falling, it became more difficult to clean the sludge pulled out of the river by the tribe's treatment plant.