You can buy flexible hosing at hardware stores to carry the water away from the foudations.

“The well was used as the town’s water supply until 1932″

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensburg,_Kansas

Of course, the new 895 megawatt coal-fired electrical power plant near Garden City/Holcomb will threaten the continued flow of this wonderful water. Only time will tell how much.

Needless to say, if your doctor tries to prescribe anti-biotics or blood pressure medicine, just tell him: No thanks … you get them in your Wichita recycled drinking water!

‘Passive’ is always best.

JW – all water is recycled water. The aquifer we draw from is recharged by runoff etc. We may as well get used to the idea and then do it right.

Actually, I attended one of those public meetings. Seems like it might have been held at the “4-H building” at 21st and Ridge. The consultants were from out of town, perhaps Kansas City. It was obvious they didn’t want to answer any questions.

Anyway, Thomas Etheredge should have kept his restaurant going and merely prepared a “study and recommendations” of HOW to build an outdoor recreational park in Park City. Etheredge could have suggested that great site along I-135. He could have sketched his suggestions for rides and placement within the park. He could have suggested food service that would complement the park.

And Thomas Etheredge could have offered to put his Hopalong Cassidy museum in the park AFTER SEDGWICK COUNTY BUILT THE RECREATIONAL VENUE PARK WITH A GIANT SALES TAX.

Then the taxpayers would have picked up the tab with a bottomless pot of money and all this squabbling over the crumbs could have been avoided.

But Etheredge dreamed too big. He jumped in with both cowboy boots slinging mud. His investors saw a man of action and jumped in with him. But now they are claiming they were duped … didn’t know what he was trying to do. They say the wool was pulled over their eyes.

It happens. Bad deal. Now close the case and get on with life.

I have gutters and a sump pump. My brother has gutters but no sump pump.

The idea here is to catch and store the water for more even distribution and use.

I am aware that the drums are recycled because they are plastic and that’s good.

But there must be a way to get safe, used empty ones.

Gutters are your friend. Keep ‘em clean and make sure the outflow extends away from the foundation.

Sump pumps are good, too. Just don’t take the easy way out and have ‘em pump their water out too close to the house; otherwise they’ll seem like some perpetual motion machine.

When I lived in Wichita (if you can call that living) I was on the Little Ark’s riverbanks. Loved the trees, the Canada Geese in winter, the raccoons and other critters who got fat grazing the neighbors’ dogs’ food dishes. The fattest possum I’ve seen in my life was down there by our place.

One night, during a glorious spring evening, my kitty strolled into my office from the patio and gave be a look that said, “This is above my pay grade. Your call.”

I walked into the living room and there was a mother raccoon with four pups (kittens?) in tow.

It wasn’t a big deal to calmly negotiate with the mama and persuade her she and her brood weren’t all that welcome in my house.

If you’re gonna live in such a god-forsaken place like Wichita, at least get some shade in the summer and enjoy what semblance of nature still exists near the riversides.

If you live in an older house, there might be an old cistern outside near a corner of your house for the very purpose of catching rain water for washing clothes, etc. Most were filled in many years ago.

Another alternative: when it is raining, take a large plastic bag outside and catch the rain in it as it pours off your roof!

My basement floods.

It would. The water that hits the roof ends up all around the foundation.

Does anybody know where to get empty 55 gallon plastic drums?

I want to build a rainwater storage and even distribution system to keep my basement dry and the aquifer wet.

I want to get ahead of the curve as I believe water is the gold of the future in Kansas.

To slow this movement, the Ogallala underground water aquifer should be protected by our state government. But instead, our elected representatives of Kansas people, our politicians, keep selling out the so-called “water rights” as though this water will last forever. I give it ten years and the underground aquifer water will be gone forever.

Kansans will have no choice but to drink recycled sewage effluent and chemically dangerous river water that is still left. But no matter … NASA’s shuttle crews are doing it now.

BTH, you take the first drink.

It was great… I think its something that needs to be brought back to the wider culture of Wichita, and other places along the River…

At one time, North High was one of a very small number of High Schools in the entire country that offered canoeing as part of the Phys. Ed. program…

And who can forget that the original “River Fest” was the North High Water Carnival… Brings back lots of memories… I took part in the old Water Carnival for a number of years, in Jr. High, AND in High School… Great times!!

Not needed. Reno/Sedgwick/Sumner counties there is sufficient water. That is the ARCAP study area.

And JWink – a lot of private donations went into funding that study.

By the way – Kelly Parks has indicated he plans another such ’star chamber’ hearing for the area south of 53rd St but will not divulge when. As I noted – their agenda is the complete conversion of this pubic waterway to their private constituents.

Actually friends in Dodge City tell me the totally dry sandy Arkansas River channel out there is mostly used by off-road vehicles for racing, etc. Next month, I hope to drive west to Greensburg, then north to Highway 50 and west into Kinsley to see where the Arkansas River begins to pick up water. Then perhaps down to Dodge City to follow Highway 56 southwestward to Montezuma and Satanta. My parents bought a gasoline service station in Satanta in 1935 as the western Kansas dust storms zeroed in there.

The disasterous “Gov. Mark Parkinson coal fired power plant” he just approved for Holcomb/Garden City will go a long way towards bringing back those dust storms of yesteryear and bleached bones of cattle carcasses in the dry arroyos of the western Kansas counties of Finney, Ford, Scott and Gove counties.

But not to worry, Parkinson will be long gone by the time the power plant is put on line … another Kansas “music man” taking the money and not producing any band uniforms.

It seems the landowners are better organized at advancing their agenda. Particularly when they get to decide when sudden, surprise decisions like this are made.

I don’t think it has to be a done deal. If more people KNEW what was really going on and knew when the meetings were, the council might be forced to make a better, or at least more representative decision.

Don’t give up!

“They take nothing but pictures. They leave nothing but footprints.”

And they don’t want eyes on the river to maybe report on what they are doing. That doesn’t surprise me.