The publication Legal Times noted that Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing in Kansas v. Colorado was the “first time in recent memory that two state attorneys general” argued against each other before the high court. The face-off between Kansas’ Stephen Six and Colorado’s John Suthers also drew attention for an unusual faux pas. During dry questioning about the expert witness fees in the states’ long-running water lawsuit, Suthers referred to Justice David Souter as “Justice Ginsberg,” meaning Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who sits next to him on the bench), to which Souter replied, “I’m greatly flattered” and “You’re not the first to have done that.” Usually, attorneys’ mix-ups have involved Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito or, in the past, Ginsburg and former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
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27 Comments
This so-called “battle” between the Kansas and Colorado Attorney Generals is just a little game we play every few years — arguing over reparations for the water taken out of the Arkansas River by Colorado before it reaches Kansas.
As all western Kansans know … no water runs in the Arkansas River in western Kansas. Its a dry sandy channel through Garden City and Dodge City and has been for years. Not a drop of water in the Arkansas River in Western Kansas. Colorado takes it all.
So in court, Colorado agrees to pay Kansas some pitiful small amount to which Kansas readily agrees. Then all participants go off for steak dinners and bottled water in some little cafe out along the Kansas – Colorado border happy to once again have “solved” the problem.
This is about the biggest hot button issue in Kansas right now. It’s the main reason the coal fired power plants don’t need to be built in Kansas. With T Boone trying to buy all the water rights to the aquifer, Kansas will need all the water it can. Water will, in the not too distant future, be more important than fuel. Let’s hope the Supreme court gets it right.
Wink and Walker, you guys are both right on the money!
Justice Souter is a cool guy, but Suthers dad needs to sit down with him and have ‘that’ talk with him about how boys and girls are different. In any event, if Six did his homework and put the facts out there about incumbent volumes, I’m betting the USSC will be making Colorado give some up. Colorado should be able to design a capture system for snow melt in the mountains and divert it to Eastern Colorado for irrigation. Water will be more and more precious in the future – we need to learn how to better use the sources that are available to us.
As someone who grew up in Stevens county, I’ve often thought that if we ever have another civil war, it will be West vs. East and will be fought over water.
Dennis
Wait just a darn minute here guys. If water conservation is important to Kansas, shouldn’t the state put restriction onto dry land corn farmer that use an ungodly amount to grow corn. It’s not all Colorado fault the river runs dry. Seems to me Kansas is just looking for more money through the court systems. Kansas doesn’t really care about the water, its the money.
“Wait just a darn minute here guys. If water conservation is important to Kansas, shouldn’t the state put restriction onto dry land corn farmer that use an ungodly amount to grow corn.”
Yes, they should. But they wont.
“It’s not all Colorado fault the river runs dry.”
It is Colorado’s fault that the water never makes it to Kansas at all. The river is dry BEFORE it gets to western Kansas. It doesnt flow again until the Middle Ark region.
And because the river doesnt flow, the big ag guys deplete the aquifer.
shouldn’t the state put restriction onto dry land corn farmer
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Why restrict dry land corn farmers?
casement, dry land corn uses rain not irrigation to grow.
Jeez, city folk!
“Colorado should be able to design a capture system for snow melt in the mountains and divert it to Eastern Colorado for irrigation.”
Users downstream to the west will then sue. It’s not that simple.
bth, Ksfrmgrl, et al: I asked friends in Dodge City a few days ago if the Arkansas River has had any running water recently. They said “No, not for many years.”
Of course, the Arkansas River used to run water. In fact back in the 1890’s or so, a Kansas entrepreneur/contractor dug a canal from about Cimarron east up on the bluff for many miles. I don’t know how he got the river water up in the canal at the west end. His plan was to provide Arkansas River water for irrigation up on the flatland along the river. I remember my dad showing us the canal route still visible out near Cimarron. However, I don’t think the system worked very well and was abandoned.
What I’m curious about is where does the Arkansas River begin to run water today? I suspect at about Kinsley. Is any blogger on here from Kinsley? I also wonder what percentage of the Arkansas River water that passes through Wichita is sewage treatment effluent and what percentage is from rain, groundwater seepage, etc. I noticed a pamphlet that said Arkansas River water contains a relatively high percentage of salt for whatever reason.
Of course, it would be much better for Kansas municipalities to obtain their drinking water from the relatively unpolluted underground Ogallala aquifer. But this is disappearing.
To be fair, Wichita so far as I know doesn’t take any of our drinking water from the Arkansas River. If it did, the Water Department would have to obtain one of those treatment plants from NASA that converts urine and sweat to drinking water.
Wichita obtains roughly half of its water from the Cheney Lake and the other half from wells into the Equus Beds aquifer near Halstead.
Of course, if the power plant industrialists, and the ethanol producers and the irrigators growing wet land crops in dry land Kansas keep on pumping, we will soon be drinking treated Arkansas River water here in Wichita.
Bottled water anyone?
I suspect at about Kinsley.
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Generally that is about where it starts.
Sometimes the water gets to Lakin, but between Garden and Dodge the river is dry sand. Kinsley or there abouts, a stream usually develops.
Yea the last I heard and confirmed when I was working some groundwater sites out west at my last job. The general average groundwater drop in the Dodge area was nearly 3 feet a year. Can’t imagine anything changing as it has not been very wet out there this year, only in the east, right?
Colorado has ignored the agreements since they were agreed upon…lol
The general average groundwater drop in the Dodge area was nearly 3 feet a year.
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Sounds about right. Around G.C. wells have been drilled deeper and deeper for years.
What’s estimated to be available 88-98 trend.
http://www.kgs.ku.edu/HighPlains/atlas/ytdmap.gif
Yep last time I was in GC water was at least 90 feet, if my memory servers me right.
Davos, were you in the geotechnical field or water well field?
Or maybe KDHE?
I was a consultant for a company…MWH. I had cliet work there. I am a geologist.
I am also a quick and horrible typer/speller. LOL
Davos,
Cool, we probably know a few of the same people in that area!
I used to do some environmental and ag-engineering in that area and civil stuff in the majority of central and western KS.
Right on. I didn’t get to know to many people out there. I used Pratt Environmental to drill almost all of my wells. I had sites all over. I have to say the one I had in GC did clean up. Can’t take credit, it was an old site when I got it. I caught on just in time to close it with the KDHE. LOL.
I caught on just in time to close it with the KDHE.
———
I have had the pleasure(?) of working with them! ha ha!
How in the devil with the Ogallala aquifer dropping so rapidly would it make any sense at all to build the giant coal fired power plants over the depleting Ogallala near Garden City? Does anything make sense anymore in Kansas?
It might look like the “great American desert” out in Western Kansas … but underneath the ground was another “Great Lake,” a big as the largest Great Lake on the Canada/U.S. boundary.
The water in that Ogallala strata is or was wonderful virtually pure water probably the best in the world.
But now BIG INDUSTRY has found this water or what’s left of it and is trying to steal the rest of it if “LOCAL KANSAS YOKELS AND POLITICIANS” let them get away with it.
As WE Bloggers, DavosRancheros and Anti warn us above in this thread the upper level of the Ogallala aquifer is dropping drastically every year. The Ogallala is deep enough under ground that it DOESN’T RECHARGE IN ANY MEASURABLE AMOUNT SO ONCE THIS WATER IS USED UP, IT WILL BE GONE FOREVER.
By drilling deeper and deeper, presumably some water of lessor quality will be extracted for some years for the industrial uses of power plants, ethanol plants and irrigation of wet land crops being grown here in dry land Kansas.
But our Kansas and Wichita drinking water is in great danger.
Bottom-line, Kansans are being robbed blind by the BIG INDUSTRIAL USERS who couldn’t care less about the future of Kansas or the Kansas people, the rightful owners of the underground water.
This is NOT a Republican or Democrat issue. It is the future of the State of Kansas and its people. Don’t let names like “Sunflower Power Company” fool you. The financing for their proposed schemes to steal Kansas water comes from New York and the giant financial companies, many of the same who are being baled out by our federal government.
What can we do to save this water? I really don’t know. Put pressure on politicians to save our environment but I don’t know if many are listening. J.W.