Western Kansas towns see the writing on the walls. Water is growing more scarce in the region, and for some of the people who live and work there, it’s a problem that needs to be addressed today.
Communities are already pouring resources into it, like water transfer projects, water recycling and aquifer recharge attempts.
But, as some towns have learned, water is a hard thing to share in the semi-arid area, and courts are struggling to balance precedents and statues.
Legal battles over water
The most recent example involves the towns of Hays and Russell in northwest Kansas. They are again in court defending plans to pipe in water from land owned in Edwards County over 70 miles away.
Years ago the towns tried to secure a water source by purchasing the land. But farmers challenging the proposal worry it will drain their source of livelihood.
A group of farmers formed the Water Protection Association of Central Kansas, or WaterPACK, to block the plan to pipe water from Edwards county to Hays and Russell.
The city manager for Hays said it’s been a legal dispute for over a decade. The city announced they were suing Edwards County late last year, Dougherty at the time told the Kansas News Service that the water in the region is already draining.
“There are people in Edwards County that don’t like seeing that water leave their area, but that water leaves their area every day in corn and cattle and hogs and dairies,” Dougherty said.
Charles Lee represented WaterPACK before the Kansas Supreme Court. He said the water transfer plan would create a dangerous precedent and lead to lower groundwater levels
“It threatens the long term viability of the aquifer and the property rights of WaterPACK members,” Lee said.
From the perspective of WaterPACK irrigators, their livelihoods and the state’s economy depend on the groundwater from the aquifer. And diverting that water could lead to less water available for growing staple crops in the region like corn and wheat.
THE CITIES argue irrigators are already causing more water loss, with 95% of water use in the region being for agricultural purposes.
Western Kansas gets almost 40 inches less rain than eastern Kansas due to the Rocky Mountains blocking the eastern flow of moisture.
Surface water from ponds and lakes is hard to come by, so the whole region and its agriculture rely on water deep underground.
Stephanie Kramer, a Kansas Department of Agriculture lawyer, said the county hasn’t explained how the diversion of water from the land owned by the city would harm its farmers.
