By TREVOR GOFF
KHI News Service
TOPEKA — Kansas water officials already have had nearly 100 public meetings involving more than 4,500 people and dozens more sessions are scheduled as they continue to collect information for Gov. Sam Brownback’s 50-year water plan.
“The vision is intended to address a reliable water supply sufficient to meet the needs of a growing Kansas population and economy through actions to conserve and extend the useful life of the Ogallala Aquifer and actions to secure, protect and restore reservoir storage,” Earl Lewis, assistant director of the Kansas Water Office, told a legislative panel today.
Officials from the Kansas Water Office updated legislators Wednesday on the public response to the proposed 50-year plan.
“Primarily, folks still want to maintain an agricultural-based economy in western Kansas,” Lewis said. “They want irrigation to be a player in that, to be the foundation
But, he said, “I think there’s growing recognition – based on our meetings- that the path that we’re on isn’t going to be sustainable for that purpose, so we’re going to have to make some changes.”
Lewis said the overriding concerns of people involved in the meetings have been conservation of Kansas reservoirs and the Ogallala Aquifer, the source for most western Kansas irrigation.
Lewis said the Kansas Water Office is hearing growing interest in finding ways to decrease the amount of water consumed in Western Kansas, ranging from the use of different crops to improving access to more efficient irrigation technology.
Currently the water office is implementing its Local Enhanced Management Area program. The LEMA program has one functioning district in a 99-square mile patch of Sheridan and Thomas counties. Irrigators there have decreased water usage by nearly 20 percent. A second LEMA is in the works for Groundwater Management District No. 1.
Lewis said conserving water storage in Kansas reservoirs is another concern heard at the meetings. The state’s reservoirs are fighting a battle with growing levels of sediment and declining storage space.
In one of the state’s more extreme cases, sediment has filled an estimated 42 percent of the storage capacity at John Redmond Reservoir near Burlington.
In March 2013, the water office sought proposals for plans to dredge the reservoir. The first phase of the project would remove 3 million cubic yards of sediment at a cost of $13.2 million.
Lewis said dredging would provide the most efficient expansion of water storage in the area.
“We’re not that far from being able to meet our needs at John Redmond,” Lewis said. “So we don’t need necessarily another John Redmond. We just need a little bit more than what we have today.”
Rep. Tom Sloan, a Lawrence Republican and chairman of the House Vision 20/20 Committee, said he was concerned the state wouldn’t be able enforce whatever 50-year plan is developed or wouldn’t have the money to execute it.
A summary of the public feedback on the plan is scheduled to be presented April 11 at a joint meeting of the Kansas Water Authority, officials from the state’s natural resource agencies and other interested parties in Manhattan.
The 50-year plan will be finalized at the Governor’s Conference on the Future of Water in Kansas on Oct. 23 in Manhattan.