MEADE – Off a dirt road on an abandoned farmstead in Meade County, Rex Buchanan searched for a metal pipe hidden in tall weeds.
Back a few decades ago, the search would have taken much longer – almost like finding a needle in a haystack. But GPS pinpointed the location and sure enough – in the middle of the thickest clump – a tube is sticking out of the earth.
This particular site is where a windmill once sat, possibly providing stock water to cattle. Buchanan, director emeritus with the Kansas Geological Survey, put a measuring tape lined with blue carpenter’s chalk 110 or so feet down the pipe into the depths of the Ogallala Aquifer. He reeled it up and checked to see where the chalk had been washed way – then figured the change in the depth of water.
“The GPS stuff is fairly new,” said Buchanan, but added the system for measuring a Kansas water well “is the old standard technology that hasn’t changed in a million years.”
Neither has the long-term picture underneath the ground. The Ogallala Aquifer has been declining for at least eight decades.
Too many holes have been poked into the Ogallala. It’s been declining a little each year since the advent of irrigation to water crops like corn – a practice that gained momentum in the 1940s and 1950s.
Now the table has reached a point that state officials and lawmakers can no longer put the issue on the back burner. If something isn’t done to preserve the state’s water resources, Kansas could face an economic thirst a few decades down the road.
Gov. Sam Brownback has made water one of his top priories since taking office with his staff developing a plan to sustain the state’s water resources. As lawmakers begin their 2017 session, they are looking at ways to fund potential solutions.
That’s why Buchanan and a handful of KGS staff are out here on a cold January day. Water is the lifeblood of the western Kansas economy. Thousands count on it. So, each year, the Kansas Geological Survey measures nearly 600 groundwater wells to help monitor the health and sustainability of the aquifer.
It’s important enough that even Buchanan, who retired in October after nearly 40 years with KGS, wanted to help with the weeklong task.
“Some of them asked me why I’m doing this,” said Buchanan of partaking in the annual chore. However, he doesn’t see it as just a job. “If the weather is nice, you get to see beautiful countryside. And I think it is an important thing to do.”
And with the data, “The people in Topeka can decided what they do in light of that.”
Monitoring the infinite resource
Since the advent of irrigation, farmers and other industries have been mining the Ogallala Aquifer faster than nature can recharge it.
“Prior to the 1940s, there was this sense there is so much water out here you can’t pump it all,” said Buchanan. “When you get into the 1940s, (federal and state officials) began to realize that wasn’t true.”
It didn’t take long for folks in this semi-arid part of Kansas to relize they were slowly depleting the underground reservoir.
Realizing the magnitude of the issue, the Kansas Water Appropriation Act was passed in 1945. Meanwhile, the U.S. Geological Survey began measuring wells to monitor the situation. The KGS took over the annual January well measurements in 1995.
The long-term data from the annual well survey shows the aquifer dry-up is gradual, but real.
“In the 1950s and the 1960s began the long struggle of what do you do – which as far as I can tell is still happening,” Buchanan said.
Officials have lead plenty of discussions about the declines over the years. In the late 1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studied the issue, even unveiling a plan in 1982 to build an aqueduct from the Missouri River to southwest Kansas as a long-term solution. In the early 1990s, while Brownback was Secretary of Agriculture, his board formed an Ogallala Task Force aimed at investigating ways of maintaining and enhancing the agricultural economy surrounding the aquifer.
There has been plenty of talk, Brownback has said, calling for action on the issue.
Researchers say if Kansans continue down the current path, the state’s water resources could be nearly spent in 50 years and roughly 70 percent of western Kansas’ Ogallala Aquifer would be depleted by 2064.
Brownback’s staff has lead the effort in developing a vision plan, formulated from 500 meetings across Kansas and 15,000 comments.
The plan, developed two years ago, includes stringent goals with targets.
Next step
Kansas Water Office Director Tracy Streeter was among the leaders who helped form the vision and is currently working to implement it. Some of the components include educational tools, water conservation areas, targeting watershed practices to help with sedimentation and helping farmers implement water-saving technology.
The state last year completed the first phase of a large-scale dredging project at John Redmond Reservoir. Officials also have helped start Water Technology Farms – demonstration farms that allow for the installation and testing of the latest irrigation technologies on a whole-field scale, said Streeter.
Public/private partnerships have helped fund some projects, including the water technology farms. Streeter said one farm had 22 sponsors.
“But as some point in time, the larger price-tag items are going to come to the forefront, and we have to figure out how to do them,” he said.
Streeter was an ex-officio member of the blue-ribbon task force that Brownback appointed to look at ways to fund projects, which, for fiscal 2018, have an estimated $43 million price tag. The task force recommendations, supported by the Kansas Water Authority last year, calls for designating one-tenth of a cent of the state’s existing sales tax for water projects.
That would raise about $38 million the first year, said Streeter.
The report also shows another $4.8 million in funds the water plan receives each year for projects from the state. Streeter, however, said that is just a portion of the $13.6 million in total revenue appropriated in fiscal 2017 for the water plan fund. These revenues are derived from water use fees on municipal, industrial and stock water users, as well a tonnage fee on fertilizer sales and a pesticide labeling fee.
However, there is an additional $8 million in demand transfers to the fund that have not been appropriated over the years due to the tight budget. These funds should come from the state general fund and the Economic Development Initiatives Fund financed by lottery proceeds.
The task force hopes to redirect that $8 million back to the water fund and secure the tenth of a cent as a long-term, secure funding source. The entire report was submitted to Brownback late last week. Action could take place this session.
Monitoring continues
Over the course of the week, the KGS crew saw rises and declines in the water table for the year. In this section of Meade County, the table has increased a bit due to the wetter summer and irrigators not pumping as much.
Yet, Buchanan points out this is just one year of a long-term story. The regional trend is still downward. Some wells in parts of southwest Kansas have declined 100 or 200 feet since development.
This year does show what can happen when irrigators cut back, he said. He noted the efforts of Sheridan County farmers who have cut back their water usage as part of a Local Enhanced Management Area program. Over the past five years that region has seen rises in the water table.
Brownie Wilson, with the KGS, said he is tabulating the data and will issue a report soon on the present condition of the state’s aquifers.
Buchanan said one of his first jobs at the survey when he started in 1978 was helping with the newly formed groundwater management districts. He has been involved in previous water plans. This water vision, however, feels different. There is more input – more stakeholder engagement.
“There is also a strong sense of ‘we don’t have time to go through this and fail again,’ ” he said. “If you look at those numbers we get every year, you run into a few more wells every year that are in fact, done. If you don’t do something now, it may be too late. There is a sense of that more this time that I don’t know that we had in the past.”
Buchanan added Kansas is known for having high-quality water data. Yale researchers used the measurements last year to analyze the economics of water. The report showed Kansas lost about $110 million of groundwater value over a 10-year period.
Without good data, there would be no way to know what is going on underground, Buchanan said.
However, he added, “Just because you get good data doesn’t mean you are going to do a good job managing the resources. But without good data, I guarantee you, you’re not going to doing to do a good job managing the resources.”
“You can’t do it without it,” he said. “It helps you make decisions.”
Kansas Agland Editor Amy Bickel has been covering Kansas agriculture for more than 15 years. Email her with news, photos and other information at abickel@hutchnews.com.
