Rural Kansans know all about the value of mineral rights and water rights. Well — “your wind rights may be worth more than your mineral rights, or your water rights, or both those combined,” Larry Mitchell of the American Corn Growers Association, told attendees at the Kansas Farmers Union annual convention last weekend in McPherson. Mitchell and other speakers urged Kansas farmers not to be too quick to sign leases for wind turbines on their property, for fear they may be steamrolled for the long term. Such caution surely is in the landowners’ best interests. Sadly, it’s also sure to slow down Kansas’ entry into this new energy frontier.
Posted by Rhonda Holman
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15 Comments
You mean the “free market” isn’t like the hand of God? That capitalists might take advantage of someone else’s ignorance for their own gain?
I am shocked, SHOCKED! (end sarcasm)
That why we need regulations and regulators to enforce them.
I trust wind energy more than any other. Only in this field of energy do we find true concern for the environment as the primary concern on both sides of the debate.
Wind is sure better than ethanol. Ethanol takes more energy to make it than it produces, it encourages irrigation and the growing of corn where corn shouldnt be grown, and it lives on the back of government subsidies. Most ethanol plants are given huge tax breaks and incentive money because they cant break even on their own. The plants only create a handful of jobs.
Ethanol can be part of an overall energy strategy, but growing irrigated corn out here and building a plant every 100 miles is just nuts in the long run. But economic development is a trendy business, and that is what they are all chasing in the west. It just makes me crazy out here when everyone thinks ethanol is THE answer.
I also makes me crazy that people out here think ANY place in Ks can support wind energy. It takes a lot more than desire, like the right geography, right wind, and appropriate transmission lines. You cant just open the pasture gate and put up a turbine. But people out here are so desperate, and so unwilling to change to EFFECTIVE economic development, that they jump on anything that sounds like help. Snake oil anyone?
Farmers look for the welfare farm subsidies. If you have a subsidy for seeing a windmill farm, they’ll be all for it. Just more money to spend on beer, smokes, and playing Keno.
Farmers in Kansas live off the backs of the American worker who pays taxes. End Subsidies!
Hey let’s end ALL susidies then.
Let’s axe the cut for property taxes on big corp machinery that even Gov. Sebelius is for.
This bush elimination of the capital gains tax and estate tax? Let’s quit subsdizing the super rich that they may get ever richer.
Now why also oh why are we subsidizing pharmaceutical companies? Most of their research money comes from federal grants. Let’s make them take the revenue they spendon their bothersome ads and tell them to spend THAT on R&D This is to say nothing of the “medicare prescription drug plan” that is in fact yet another subsidy for them.
Uh Joe? My guess is that you yourself are subsidized. You just don’t call it that.
Subsidize the super rich? Subsidize corporations?
Since when is collecting less taxes considered a subsidation? What is the tax rate for the rich and corporations suppose to be?
Who dictates that the super rich and corporations much pay a certain tax rate and any decrease in that tax rate is a subsidation?
Your primise doesn’t make since JR. You are just another upset leftist.
Medicare perscription drugs? Yeah! Like the government makes drugs. Its you and all the leftist and old people who demanded for many years to get drugs paid for by the government for the elderly. Well! How else are you going to do it?
Canada right? LOL!
*sigh*
My point here was that growing subsidy corn in the desert is not good for anyone but the subsidy queens. Grow corn where it grows best, and put the ethanol plants there.
Look at Russell, they put in an ethanol plant when they did not have the water supply to support it, so later they had to ration residential water. Now, to support the ethanol plant, they have to drain Cedar Bluff Reservoir, which is revenue positive and a destination tourist attraction. Does that make sense to anyone but the Kansas Water Office and Governor Leadership?
What will happen to all the feed lots and irrigation crops when the water runs out? If you dont support the recreational use of water, when the irrigation runs out, you will have no industry and no outdoor tourism either. I think that is called the Buffalo Commons.
The clock is ticking on water in Kansas.
ksfarmgrrl. You are absolutely right. The aquifer in Western Kansas is about drained. It has already reached the critical point and the state government knows it.
Every year they address the problem and try to pass bills to limit irrigation use since farmers use 95% of the water. The replinishing rate of the aquifer has long pass its point to be able to sustain itself.
It is very politically unpopular to take away farmers water. They think they own it and even if you pass legislation to limit or ban the use, they will still irrigate illegally and law enforcement out in western Kansas will just look the other way.
The last report I saw was that at best conservative rates, there is only a good 15 years left of water out there. And I have no doubt in my mind that the farmers will dry it up.
Ranching cattle will still happen because you can turn them onto grass, but feed lots, packing plants, hell even the cities and industry won’t have enought to support itself.
Western Kansas is going to die. It’s been dieing for quite some time with double digit population loss every year.
I have driven to about every town in Kanas and I do it on a daily basis and I see the ghost towns emerging. I don’t see this reversing and I don’t think it will.
I agree Joe. Amazing :)
A handful of select communities out here will survive, but they will be the real exceptions. Conventional wisdom is that 15 years from now, only 6 communities will survive in the 18 counties of northwest ks. Y’all in the east are gonna love the tax burden that generates as this region shuts down.
God help me from agreeing with anything former state senator Larry Salmons said, but he got it right on one thing. In 2004 hearings on water, he said, “why pay irrigators to stop their water use when the state already owns all the water? Why pay them for something we already own? For mistakes the state made in over appropriation?”
He was right. There is a proposal this year to pay irrigators to give up their water rights. The state, namely David Pope, has over appropriated water rights for 20 years on a magnitude out here you cant imagine. In other words, he sold more water than we had, and now he wants to pay them to give it up? Sounds like hush money to me.
The state could easily just tell them to stop irrigating, but Farm Bureau, Corn Growers Association, etc. just wont allow it. Follow the money, er, the campaign contributions.
Yet another welfare subsidy for big irrigators. They dont even own the water and we want to pay them for it? Sounds like a sure way to kill the irrigation reduction plan, not a way to make it work when the state is facing such debt and budget problems.
Have you ever looked at the makeup of the Kansas Water Authority board? Big irrigators hold most of the seats, and even when the basin advisory committees recommend something sane, the KWA just ignores it. And who appoints those people? Why…none other than governor leadership.
See “Steve Irsik” and “Circle K Ranch”.
P.S. Joe, western kansas has no one to blame for their future but themselves. Stupid policies and self defeating decisions are finally coming home to roost, and all the kings horses and all the kings men wont be able to put Humpty together again.
Unfortunately, there wont be anyone left out here to pay the bills. Guess who will pay? You got it. People in more urban Kansas areas. Let the games begin.
“Sadly, it’s also sure to slow down Kansas’ entry into this new energy frontier.”
Rhonda do you understand how invested the corn growers are in ethanol and what a threat wind energy poses? Also, the acres lost to turbines are acres of corn that wont be grown. Corn growers association cant support that now can they?
You really should attend some water hearings in the legislature this year. The room will be filled with corn growers association, farm bureau, irrigation equipment dealers association, and other special interest groups. We cant have beneficial use of water in Kansas. Resistance is futile.Must…continue…irrigation…at…all…costs!
Very enlightening posts Joe, farmgrrl. You’re right. Water is the big sleeper issue. Not only depletion, but quality. On quality, we’re just beginning to see the results of 70 years of burying and dumping nasty stuff in the ground.
(Take a drink of water, XXX, you’ll be alright)
Water, more than oil, is what has driven this country since its inception. The water quality in Kansas is embarassing to say the least. It has been a sleeper issue for too long. It should be on the front page of every Kansas newspaper. He who controls the water controls the country.
American water company is one of the biggest problems in the states. Their sole ambition is to control as much water as they can. In places where they are the only suppliers, water rates have skyrocketted. In many locales, cities have bought out American water at ridiculous prices to give the citizens of the city reasonable rates. Government losing money, but for the good of the people. Ain’t that something different.
The water issue is not a sleeper in western kansas. It may be creeping your direction, but it is in our faces here. In fact, a dem legislative candidate here in 2000 said the number one question he was asked concerned water rights. And yet people of both parties are keeping it quiet at the state level. Ticking time bomb.
I agree with the quality issue too. You mean you dont like all those nutrients we are washing your way from west to east? Free fertilizer, no? :) You have to understand though, quality takes a back seat out here when there isnt even enough quantity to run a household.
This blog posting was of great use in learning new information and also in exchanging our views. Thank you.Isaac Marowitzhttp://www.irrigationsuppliescenter.com