Water is the lifeblood of the Kansas economy — and it’s by no means secure. This summer, Kansas streams had “less volume of water than at any time since records have been kept,” including the Dust Bowl years, said Steve Adams, natural resource coordinator for the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.
Yes, the recent rains have helped, but the long-term picture is the same: Kansas continues to face drought conditions and must plan for its water resources with both conservation and farsighted development of resources, as our two-part editorial, Sunday and Monday, argued.
“Water is the big issue coming down the pike,” says Rex Buchanan, associate director of the Kansas Geological Survey. And it has “huge implications for this state that we’re not facing right now.”
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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36 Comments
Some of us have been warning about this for decades.
Ben,How is water the lifeblood of Kansas? When I think of Kansas I think crops.
Will,at risk of stating the obvious, you CAN’T have crops without water.
Nor can you have livestock, humans, or even wild prairie grasses without water.
Thanks steve. One would think that would have been obvious.
When most people think of Kansas they think of Randy Quaid living in a trailer somewhere.
Anyone seen how empty the Ark river is latelly?
That’s a river?I thought there was a fire hydrant open somewhere.
So lets build a couple million Mcmansions.
And lawns. Big ones. Golf courses, too.
Very little of the water in the Arkansas River is used for agricultural purposes. By far and away, most of the water is groundwater. Some recharging of the groundwater naturally occurs, but not at a sustainable rate. Water is the lifeblood given the human body comprising roughly 60% of the body. Water resources can be managed, but like everything else there is a cost.
Guess I should clarify that most of the water used for agricultural purposes is ground water.
Why do the same leftists who whine about the enviroment wish to destroy said environment via massive population growth through useless third world immigration?
Viva La Revolucion Blanco!!
I know how about a tax cut,or we could declare war on a country that has alot of water.
Jeez, you can’t even ask a question around here without getting ridiculed.
Ralph – groundwater and surface water are intimately interconnected. Pump the groundwater dry and the river will follow.
Now Ben, irrigators in Lane County have no effect on the Ark River. While I agree with you that in some locations they are interrelated, by far and away most of the groundwater that is being used in this state has little to do with the tributaries.
Global warming, man made or otherwise, will have a disastrous effect on Kansas, as well as the mid-west as a whole. We will be a desert. The crops that ninety-some other countries depend on us for will dry up just as the land will. If you think the dust bowl of the thirties was bad, it can’t compare to what will be left in the plains states. They will be uninhabitable. The west coast will probably be under both water and mud via year round El Niño; the east coast could be anything from a frozen wasteland to a perpetual state of flooding.
Kansas will not have to worry about water because there will be no one here. Imagine the wars that will take place over food, water, and living conditions. Not a bright thought.
As for the interim, before it hits, we should be thinking about massive conservation efforts, as well as re-supplying the aquifers as much as possible. Good bye green lawns, hello crushed rock.
Ra;ph – what formation are they drawing from? It is well known that groundwater withdrawals from areas near the river and its tributaries in both KS and CO have a deleterious effect on river flow. Streams and aquifers interact in a somewhat complex fashion; that is why the State requires licensing for us geologists who work in the field.
They give lip service to the problem, but I seriously doubt that politicans ever will. Everybody knows that it is the farmers who are running the aquifer dry, because they grow subsidized irrigatable crops that needs lots of water beyond what normally falls in rain in our area. They can grow without irrigation, but they won’t get the yields they want, so they water everyday from seed to harvest.
But farmers are a very powerful lobbying force and a powerful voting pool. They will get what they want and nobody is going to stop them. They’ll take every last water out and laugh all the way to the bank, while not paying a cent in taxes.
The only way we are going to save the aquifers is that we have to radically change our policy towards farmers. Meaning some of them will have to face the tough luck of farming based on Market Forces and not government handouts, or we just put most farmers on the CRP gravy train and let them ride the taxpayers back for the rest of their lives. You can guess which will cost us, is the route we are going to take.
Basically we will have to pay farmers not to water their crops.
Very true Joe. I think the so-called buffalo commons idea will have to re re-visited. One thing I would add to it is that returning land to prairie and riparian woodlands will provide excellent habitat for game. Then allow land-owners to purchase game permits wholesale for re-sale. Chicago lawyers will pay a lot of money for hunting trips.
Sadly, we’re poisonong what little potable water we have left. I hate to pick on the farmers (leave that to Joe), but hog lagoons, feedlot run-off, and farm chemicals are building into a witches brew. And of course Industry is doing it’s part to make our water undrinkable. Conway Kansas anyone? Try drinking the water in McPherson county.
XXX just proves the point on how politically sensitive it is. He things I’m bashing on farmers, although I’m telling the truth. He goes the other route and blames it on corporate hog farms and refineries. Although he mentions farm chemicals, which is by far the largest pollutor of our water system.
But any critisim on farmers and there method of farming is considered a personal attack and they don’t deserve it or shouldn’t recieve it. By exempting farmers from the water useage and pollution debate, you are cronically ignoring the problem.
While I would be in favor of more environmentally oriented farming, I do not think farmers are the primary source of this problem.
It would be interesting to compare rural and urban areas as to per capita or per acre consumption of water.
Cities like Wichita use a lot of water. They also have done everything in their power to get rid of excess water as opposed to finding a way to bank it back to the aquifer via cisters or more extensive local channeling.
Y’all make me laugh. It’s pretty myopic to think that game hunters will make up the difference in revenue between dry land farming and irrigated farming. And, while the City of Wichita uses roughly 22 million gallons annually, that’s only a portion of the 145 million gallons that is appropriated from the Equus Beds. If memory serves me correctly, ag interests have roughly 47% of the water rights. Furthermore, for every action there are consequences. Go to dry land farming? No problem. Watch grain prices increase 4 and 5 times. This price increase impacts every impact of your lives. For example, corn products appear in approximately 65% of all items that are stocked on the grocery shelves. Everything has a price. Some of you act like we should go back to the dawn of time and eke out a living like the American Indians. Sheeeez.
http://www.nffc.net/issues/fnf/FFFAqanda.html#7
From a 2002 article I think, but you get the idea.
There is little correlation between what farmers receive for their products and what the consumer pays at the grocery store. It is not unusual to see increased bread and cereal prices on the retail shelf at the same time that the prices farmers receive for wheat and corn (the raw materials of bread and cereal) take a nosedive.
The farmer’s share of the consumer dollar is small and decreasing—currently about 18 cents per dollar, while ten years ago it was 32 cents per dollar. Currently there is less than eight cents worth of corn or wheat in a box of cereal that costs more than $2.00 at the grocery store. Over the last decade, retail beef prices have increased by more than 30% while live cattle prices to ranchers have actually decreased.
Therefore, fair increases in prices to farmers would represent only a very small percentage of overall food costs; and could (and should) be absorbed by other players in the system rather than being passed on to the consumer. The Food from Family Farms Act would also substantially decrease the need for tax-dollar funded income subsidies and emergency payments.
Excellent link; however, the grain market is a commodities market. Supply and demand economics dictate that any price increases will be passed along to the end users. Is it like the oil industry? Perhaps not, but there is a direct impact.
So far, no poster on this thread has mentioned the giant elephant water user coming to Kansas and Kansas agriculture.
That is, the newly emerging ETHANOL INDUSTRY. Ethanol plants are being heralded by politicians as the economic saviour of Kansas without acknowledging potential damage to water bearing aquifers underlaying Kansas.
Manufacturing ETHANOL uses millions of gallons of water as well as irrigation of the corn needed for the process. I hope to research this but perhaps some bloggers already have good information on this manufacturing process.
Sheez ralph – and what are you going to do after the Olagalla runs dry?
Good points from Joe, JWink (I had considered ethanol as part of ag), XXX about the water situation. One thing that I find particularly galling professionally is our tendancy to chanellize to get rid of water when it rains and then whine because we don’t have water when it doesn’t. Perhaps we need a bit more hydrology, hydrogeology and geomorphology and just a bit less engineering when we look at this. We need to see the big picture.
Ralph the one thing you are forgetting about commodity prices of cereal grains is that it is subsidized. So an increase in the price of grains could spell the end of Federal subsidies. This will allow farmers to become self-sufficent and at the same time save billions of dollars in taxpayers money.
Yeah! We do pay for it somewhere, right now it is in taxes.
I know a farmer out near Russell Kansas who doesn’t irrigate at all. He still produced great yields on sorghum crops that rivil those who irrigate everyday.
The technology of genetic engineered crop seeds go a long way to be able to dry and no till farm. Many farmers out in Eastern Colorado have been adopting this and had great results without having to irrigate.
While the yields might not be as much, it’s close enough to still realize a good margin of profit by saving in natural gas to run sprinklers and the capital cost of buying and maintaining them.
Ralph wrote–
“Go to dry land farming? No problem. Watch grain prices increase 4 and 5 times. This price increase impacts every impact of your lives. For example, corn products appear in approximately 65% of all items that are stocked on the grocery shelves . . .”
Ralph, how much do consumers pay for the cost of the grain in their groceries?
Answer–hardly anything. The cost for the grain in a box of 3.25 cereal is maybe 18 cents.
You multiply 18 by 3 and you get 54 cents. Wow.
The processors could absorb this cost and more without even raising their prices.
But that’s the miracle of capitalism for you, a dollar for the cardboard box and advertising, a dollar for the processing, a dollar for profit, and 18 cents to the hard-working farmer.
And how much for using fossil water stored over millions of years? How much for polluting and despoiling the environment? How much for driving endangered species like the wolf and eagle off the land?
Not a penny.
My friend Peg in Ellsworth follows water issues closely and has some interesting stuff on her blog. A link to an article about water in the CJ, but you have to register to read it. It’s free. And good.
http://www.kansasprairie.net/blog1/blogindex.htm
So… why would the gov care about recreational boating at Perry, but deliberately screw recreation to support Hays in draining Cedar Bluff to the “dead pool” as the state calls it?
Good water policy? She loves recreational water users? She loves mike hayden? She loves fish? heheheh.
Votes?
bingo.
Under governor leadership, water is the political currency of the day. And she even has her own darth cheney, er, joe harkins, to do the devil’s work of selling kansas water to the broker delivering the most votes.
In the case of Cedar Bluff, that would be John Bird. You know, the “dean” of the democrats in western kansas. The one who’s wife less than chatty kathy appointed to the judicial review board? And then withdrew because of cronyism?
Can you say “heck of a job birdie”?
I thought you could.
But can you say it with a dry throat and no water? Welcome to Sebelius land, where the only protected lakes either carry her name or tons of political capital.
Thank you Richard Crowson, cartoon editorialist of the Wichita EAGLE, for your entertaining but deadly serious cartoon on today’s (9/02/06) Wichita EAGLE editorial page. It perfectly illustrates the danger to our Kansas drinking water supply by continued and increasing demands on our great underground Ogallala and other water aquifers.
The amazing Ogallala aquifer holds the ancient remaining water from the eons old Kansas ocean. Recharge is slow from Rocky Mountain runoff. In other words, it is barely rechargable. Most of our “always” running rivers such as the north and south branches of the Ninnescah River, Chikaskia River, various branches of the Kansas River to the north and even our Arkansas River to some degree are dependent on the seepage from the Ogallala.
The Ogallala was said at one time to contain as much water as Lake Superior of the Great Lakes but this water was hidden underground under the surface of western Kansas and some seven other states.
I always thought it was ironic that early Kansas settlers in western Kansas sometimes lived in sod houses with dirt floors and clawed a living from the sometimes bone dry surface. In reality and unknown to them in the late 1800’s, they were living above the surface of one of the world’s largest underground “lakes.” But once this largess was discovered, it has been drained incessantly almost without control. No one entity is controlling this and it will soon be a lost resource.
Somewhere, sometime someone has to stand up and say stop wasting this water resource.
So, thank you RICHARD CROWSON for saying in one great editorial sketch what is so hard to express in words.
Here here winky!!!!!!
Ethanol is just the next round of economic develpment trickery. “Step right up folks, put up yer money, and see the monkeys fly away with it. They’ll bring back jobs in just a few minutes. Just keep waiting…”
Economic development as it is practiced in Kansas is nothing more than the biggest hoax ever perpetrated upon the taxpayer.
Almost as big of a hoax as “scientists” in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s telling farmers that “rain would follow the plow”.
How’s that working?
I think you can expect about the same from any economic development program that sucks MILLIONS in subsidies and tax breaks from local communities to create, um, 10? 20? jobs?
heheheh. I’d like to have the job pushing THAT pencil…
Why no story in the WE about the havoc Russell’s ethanol plant has caused for their community, and the entire region surrounding it?
Why not ask Ellsworth or WaKeeney or HAYS how they feel about Russell’s ethanol plant using all the water in Cedar Bluff and now looking to Kanopolis to satisfy their ever growing unquenchable thirst for water?
Why not tell the story of how RESIDENTIAL users in Russell are being asked to submit to severe water use restrictions so that their precious ETHANOL plant can continue operation?
Why not? Afraid to tell the truth?
heheheheh
Girl Scouts Clean Energy for a Clean Environment programs
http://www.nesea.org/education/gscleanenergy/glossary.htm