The Associated Press

The price of oil briefly dipped below $50 a barrel for the first time in more than five years Monday as evidence mounted that the world will be oversupplied with oil this year.

U.S. oil dipped to $49.95 before quickly inching back over $50. Around noon, it was down $2.40, or 4.6 percent, to $50.29 a barrel. In June of last year it traded for $107 a barrel.

Oil has been falling for several months because global supplies are rising, especially in the U.S., at a time when weakness in the global economy is slowing the growth in oil demand.

On Monday Citigroup cut its forecast for 2015 global oil prices as a result of high supplies.

The last time U.S. oil traded below $50 was April 29, 2009.

By Dave Ranney, KHI News
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — State officials have sold the former Rainbow Mental Health Facility building to the University of Kansas Endowment Association.

The 11-acre property is a short distance from KU Medical Center.

“The transaction has occurred,” said Natalie Lutz, director of communications at the medical center. “The KU Endowment Association has purchased the building and will be meeting with the university to determine what the actual purpose of the property is going to be.”

Lutz said Friday she was not in a position to comment on the final sale price or how the property might be developed.

The Kansas State Finance Council, a nine-member panel that includes Gov. Sam Brownback and House and Senate leadership, in November agreed to sell the property for $1.9 million.

Proceeds from the sale are to be deposited in the State General Fund and credited to the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services.

Since April, the two-story building has housed Rainbow Services Inc. (RSI), a short-term crisis stabilization and detox facility. RSI has a three-year lease and is not expected to move for one or two more years.

Rainbow Mental Health Facility had been a state-run, 50-bed hospital for people with severe mental illnesses. It opened in 1974.

State officials closed 14 of the hospital’s 50 beds in December 2010 after federal surveyors cited the facility for being understaffed. A year later, 28 of the remaining 36 beds were closed due to safety concerns cited by state fire marshal’s office.

Dave Ranney is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The amount of storm damage reported in Kansas in 2014 was the lowest amount in 16 years.

The Kansas Insurance Commissioner’s office says insurance companies received $112.4 million in storm damage last year. It was the third consecutive year storm damage totals had declined.

The National Weather Service reported 40 tornadoes in Kansas in 2014, the lowest total since 31 were recorded in 1989.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports the record storm damage total was just over $1 billion in 2011.

And last year’s estimate was the state’s lowest since storm losses totaled about $104 million in 1998.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — State and local governments that receive taxes from the production of oil and natural gas could faces challenges as prices plunge.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that falling gasoline prices have no effect on two key taxes that state and local governments rely on: sales taxes and motor fuel taxes.

But the falling prices of oil and natural gas will have an effect on two other taxes that are tied to oil prices and production: the state severance tax; and property taxes that are levied by the state and most other local units of government.

The severance tax is a tax on minerals extracted out of the ground in Kansas. Property taxes are also levied on oil and gas wells.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas judicial panel has slammed the state’s increasing reliance on the use of local money to supplement state funding of public schools.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the three judges Shawnee County District Court panel issued its ruling last week in a school funding lawsuit. Beyond finding that the state needs to boost funding for students, the judges also didn’t hesitate to make known their views on the methods the state uses to fund schools.

At issue is something called the local option budget, which allows districts to raise more money locally than the state provides.

School officials say the LOB initially was envisioned as a way to cover extras. But because general funds didn’t keep pace with inflation, schools started tapping their LOBs to cover basic costs.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Legal experts are predicting that elections to decide whether to retain judges will continue to become more politicized, both in Kansas and across the country.

This year, Kansas Supreme Court justices Eric Rosen and Lee Johnson kept their seats with about 53 percent of the vote — well below the usual margins of 70 percent in most judicial elections.

The Kansas City Star reports political battles over judges are expected to intensify because Kansas campaign laws don’t cover retention elections for the state Supreme Court. That allows more money from outside the state to affect the judicial elections.

Critics fear the change will pressure justices to allow politics to influence their rulings, rather than sticking with the rule of law.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The incoming chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee says raising the federal fuel taxes is among the options under consideration to replenish the dwindling Highway Trust Fund.

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota says all options must be looked at to fill an enormous shortfall when the existing highway legislation expires in May.

Gas and diesel taxes haven’t risen since 1993, resulting in perennial shortfalls in the fund that pays for most road projects.

Several commissions have called for raising the taxes, but Congress has been reluctant. Instead lawmakers have dipped repeatedly into the general treasury to keep the trust fund solvent.

The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon and the diesel tax is 24.4 cents per gallon.

Thune spoke on “Fox News Sunday.”

By Bryan Thompson, Heartland Health Monitor

A lot has changed in the three decades since the idea of building an aqueduct from the Missouri River to western Kansas was first studied and shelved. For one thing, the water shortages that were mere projections then are now imminent. That reality has prompted state officials to dust off the study and re-examine the aqueduct idea.

Western Kansas is heavily dependent on the Ogallala Aquifer. But since 1950, that ancient supply of underground water has been rapidly depleted by irrigation. That irrigation produces corn, which is fed to livestock to support the beef and, more recently, dairy industries, which are the foundation of the western Kansas economy. But water levels have dropped so low in parts of more than 30 counties that irrigation pumps can no longer be used there. That’s why rivers in western Kansas are little more than dry stream beds.

Mark Rude is tracking the depletion of the aquifer for a groundwater management district in the heart of the affected area.

“We’re only 9 percent sustainable with that 2 million acre-feet that we use in southwest Kansas,” Rude says. “And 9 percent sustainable is a very formidable number, because you can’t conserve your way out of that.”

In other words, 91 percent of the water currently being pumped would have to be shut off just to keep the aquifer from declining any more. But if the water doesn’t come from the aquifer, where could it come from? The 2011 flooding on the Missouri River gave Rude and others an idea about how to answer that question. While devastating to those along the river, the flood looked like an opportunity.

“Folks who realize the deep value of water in western Kansas looked at that and go, ‘Wow, if we only had a couple days of that flow we could fill the aquifer, and we’d all be happy,’” Rude says.

Rude looked into that idea, and rediscovered the 1982 study proposing a system to capture excess water from the Missouri River and store it in a huge, new lake near White Cloud in the northeastern corner of the state. It would then be pumped uphill through an aqueduct to western Kansas. There it would be stored in another new lake — by far the largest in the state — for distribution.

The cost was estimated at $1,000 per acre-foot of water delivered. With that price tag, the concept was dead on arrival. But recently, the Kansas Water Office told the committee charged with updating the old study that the cost is now closer to $500 per acre-foot. The savings are due to lower interest rates. Cost is a concern for committee member Judy Wegener-Stevens, but it’s not the only reason she’s opposed to the project.

“I don’t feel an aqueduct should be built,” Wegener-Stevens says. “I feel that people in western Kansas have been pumping water unconditionally, without any rules, for 40 years, and they have not used their resource very well.”

Wegener-Stevens, who lives in White Cloud, said the nearby Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska would fight a proposed aqueduct. They have rights to water in the Missouri River and are working to quantify those rights. There might also be objections from other states, even though the idea is to take only “excess” water. Throw in anticipated battles over property rights and environmental concerns, and some committee members say the aqueduct still doesn’t appear realistic.

But committee member Clay Scott isn’t willing to give up on the idea. Three generations of his family raise cattle and grow irrigated corn and wheat near Ulysses, in southwest Kansas. Scott points to an Arizona aqueduct called the Central Arizona Project as proof that a Kansas aqueduct is feasible. He says a reliable source of water is vital to the future of his family’s farm.

“I’ve got three boys that are looking to maybe come back to the farm, but, you know, it takes a lot of acres in western Kansas to support a family — especially coming through these last three years of drought,” Scott says. “It’s a challenge to tell your boys that there’s an opportunity. There’s a future for you here.”

Scott and other members of the advisory committee say the first priority should be some sort of compact with other states and Indian tribes to secure rights to Missouri River water. Then they can worry about all the other obstacles to the project. Earl Lewis, the assistant director of the Kansas Water Office, agrees with that approach.

“Moving forward and investing considerable time and funds into pursuing a project that doesn’t have the legal security of a water right or some kind of compact doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Lewis says.

Even if the Missouri River doesn’t pan out as a water source, Lewis says there may be other options. State law could be changed to make it easier to transfer surplus water to western Kansas from other parts of the state. And Kansas may be able to get some financial help from Colorado, in exchange for providing water to ease shortages on the Front Range. But it will be up to others to explore those options and others. The advisory committee’s charge was solely to update the aqueduct study and make recommendations. Those recommendations are due by the end of January.

Bryan Thompson is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

POWHATTAN – A Kansa woman was injured in an accident just after 10 p.m. on Saturday in Brown County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2000 Chevy Blazer driven by Shadow L Ballman, 21, Holton, was westbound on 130th Road six miles southwest of Powhattan.

The vehicle left the snow-covered roadway to the north and struck a ravine.

Ballman was transported to Horton Community Hospital. The KHP reported she was not wearing a seat belt.