Setting Groundwater Rules No Easy Task for Kansas: Hutchinson News

Home Browse Search

Page 1 of 2 < return to originu_l._page Setting groundwater rules no easy task for Kansas By Amy Bickel GARDEN CITY - Cliff Mayo recalled what a relative told him in the 1950s about the underground cache of water he still uses to irrigate his crops. "'There will come a day when water will run out in western Kansas,' " Mayo said his relative told him. "I didn't like him very much, and I told him, 'You're crazy.' " "I knew this water would never run out," the Finney County farmer said while addressing the Kansas Water Congress summer conference here Thursday, referring to his attitude more than 50 years ago. Back then, the word "depletion" wasn't uttered by farmers. The pumping rates and the number of well permits issued were not a concern. But time has proven to irrigators that the Ogallala Aquifer is exhaustible. And although western Kansas is a long way from running out of water, the numerous irrigation wells that dot the landscape have made a dent in the aquifer's reserves. Concerned about the Ogallala's decline, the Kansas Water Authority formed the citizen -based Ogallala Aquifer Management Advisory Committee to look at groundwater decline. That committee requested the three western Kansas groundwater management districts to establish protocols within each district and objectives on how to manage areas of high priority, called subunits. That's a difficult task for groundwater management districts, which all differ - from the terrain and farmers to the issues and protocols being established to solve the problems, said Susan Stover, an environmental scientist with the Kansas Water Office. For instance, the aquifer under the southwest part of the state is one of Kansas' richest. Areas where water has declined by a 100 -foot saturated thickness still might have hundreds of feet left - lasting more than 200 years. Other areas, however, might have only 50 years left, according to the Kansas Geological Survey. The scenario differs in Greg Graff s district, west - central Kansas' Groundwater Manage -ment District No. 1, where large - volume pumping has depleted about 50 percent of the aquifer since 1950. He has noticed the changes on his own wheat and corn farm. Wells that once could fully irrigate a crop are dwindling so much that they now are used as a crop enhancement. "There is a lot of conflict in water, there is no doubt about it," Stover said of getting the program established. "But what happens in western Kansas is viable to the entire state." http: / /www.dailynews. net/ hutchinson /cgi- bin/printerpage.pl 8/23/2004