Western Kansas towns see the writing on the walls. Water is growing more scarce in the region, and for some of the people who live and work there, it’s a problem that needs to be addressed today.
Communities are already pouring resources into it, like water transfer projects, water recycling and aquifer recharge attempts.
But, as some towns have learned, water is a hard thing to share in the semi-arid area, and courts are struggling to balance precedents and statues.
Legal battles over water
The most recent example involves the towns of Hays and Russell in northwest Kansas. They are again in court defending plans to pipe in water from land owned in Edwards County over 70 miles away.
Years ago the towns tried to secure a water source by purchasing the land. But farmers challenging the proposal worry it will drain their source of livelihood.
A group of farmers formed the Water Protection Association of Central Kansas, or WaterPACK, to block the plan to pipe water from Edwards county to Hays and Russell.
The city manager for Hays said it’s been a legal dispute for over a decade. The city announced they were suing Edwards County late last year, Dougherty at the time told the Kansas News Service that the water in the region is already draining.
“There are people in Edwards County that don't like seeing that water leave their area, but that water leaves their area every day in corn and cattle and hogs and dairies,” Dougherty said.
Charles Lee represented WaterPACK before the Kansas Supreme Court. He said the water transfer plan would create a dangerous precedent and lead to lower groundwater levels
“It threatens the long term viability of the aquifer and the property rights of WaterPACK members,” Lee said.
From the perspective of WaterPACK irrigators, their livelihoods and the state’s economy depend on the groundwater from the aquifer. And diverting that water could lead to less water available for growing staple crops in the region like corn and wheat.
The cities argue irrigators are already causing more water loss, with 95% of water use in the region being for agricultural purposes.
Western Kansas gets almost 40 inches less rain than eastern Kansas due to the Rocky Mountains blocking the eastern flow of moisture.
Surface water from ponds and lakes is hard to come by, so the whole region and its agriculture rely on water deep underground.
Stephanie Kramer, a Kansas Department of Agriculture lawyer, said the county hasn’t explained how the diversion of water from the land owned by the city would harm its farmers.
“WaterPACK has failed to allege that harm to its members will be caused by the approval of these change applications,” Kramer said.
The towns argue it is still their right to access the water from land the communities own.
Daniel Buller represented the towns before the Kansas Supreme Court.
“The Kansas water Appropriation Act allows a water right owner to change a water right from irrigation to municipal use,” he said.
The cities have already had the water rights approved for municipal use by the Department of Agriculture. But with Edwards County blocking the project, the Kansas Supreme Court Justices will decide whether the association and county can prevent the already approved plans.
Securing water for the future
Hays and Russell are not alone in their search for water security. Major towns in the region like Garden City and Dodge City are pushing projects of their own. The towns are aware of the scarcity of water.
Tanner Rutschman, a city engineer for Dodge City, explained at an event where the town and its source of water currently stands earlier this year.
“In this well just west of town, in the year 2000, the depth was about 12 foot to water,” Rutschman said of access to the aquifer. “In 2020, we're down over 45 foot depth to water, so it’s declining.”
The Ogallala Aquifer is the only source of drinking water for Dodge City and many other towns in western Kansas. The city's proposed system would dump treated wastewater into the barren Arkansas riverbed so it can trickle down to the aquifer. This process is slow and can take hundreds or thousands of years to fully recharge.
This closed-loop system has also been adopted by other cities like nearby Garden City. With this system, the cities hope to become “water neutral” by taking used water — like the treated wastewater and water from sources like a new cheese plant — and sending it back to where they drew it from.
The city is requesting a total of $34 million from state and federal funds and providing $22 million of its own.
Currently, that water is also being used by nearby farmers to decrease how much the agriculture industry pulls from the aquifer.
As climate-related stress continues in the region, tensions between towns and farmers will continue as both struggle for the limited water beneath them. But there’s still room for adjustments and innovations to keep the towns alive and able to grow.
“Projects like these are setting the city up for direct water reuse, which will become more and more necessary in the coming years,” Rutschman told the Kansas News Service earlier this year.
In the coming weeks, the Kansas Geological Survey will measure water wells across western Kansas to see how much water is left. Last year, measurements revealed the region overall lost an average of almost a foot of groundwater in 2024.
Calen Moore covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can email him at cmoore@hppr.org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio.
Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.
