WSP10064

• File Number: 8112.600
• Description: Arkansas White Red Basins Interagency Committee - AWRBIAC -- Reports
• Basin: Arkansas
• Water Division: 2
• Date: 4/1/1977
• Title: Technical Memorandum -- Activity 3 Phase II -- Specific Problem Analysis - 1975 National Assessment -- Arkansas-White-Red Region Part 1 of 2
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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While there is no large metropolitan area in the region, there
are a few trade centers. Two cities, Garden City in Finney County
and Liberal in Seward County, are the major commercial centers for
the region. Each city's 1970 population was about 14,000, but both
have grown considerably since 1970.

Land Resources:

Nearly all of the area's 7.6 million acres are in privately
owned farms. Of the nearly six million acres of cropland, nearly
1.9 million were irrigated by 1975. This is double the irrigated
acreage of a decade earlier. Irrigation in the region is wide-
spread, with no one part of the area dominating. Ten of the fif-
teen counties in the region have irrigated acreages exceeding
100,000 acres.

Irrigated acreage in the region is expected to increase
rapidly during the next few years, reaching 2.2 million acres
by the year 1985 and over 2.3 million acres by 2000. Increases
in irrigation are expected to occur in nearly every county of
the region. '

Water Resources:

With precipitation averaging only 15-19 inches per year,
annual runoff of less than 0.5 inch, and an estimated 230 million
acre-feet of groundwater in storage in the region, the importance
of the groundwater resource is clear.

Although there is no major surface water storage facility in
the region, there is some limited surface irrigation development
along the Arkansas River between the Colorado state line and
Garden City. Most of this irrigation is served by John Martin
Reservoir in Colorado. But because of the limited availability
and poor quality of Arkansas River water, this source of water
supplies less than three percent of the irrigation water demand
in the region. The rest is provided by the groundwater resource.

Except in the alluvium of the Arkansas River, most of the
groundwater is of good quality. In some areas well yields are
as high as 2,000 gallons per minute. The combination of high
quality and abundance of groundwater currently permits irrigators
to pump close to 3.5 million acre-feet of water per year. Projec-
tions indicate that this figure will rise to close to 4.3 million
acre-feet per year by the year 2000.

With an estimated average annual groundwater recharge of
only about 140,000 acre-feet, increasing rates of groundwater

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