DWR Currents
Week of January 25, 2010
Legislative Issues
While the 2010 Legislative session is still taking shape, and budget issues are expected to dominate the session in anticipation of an unprecedented fourth consecutive year of decline in revenues, some action is already underway on water resource-related bills:
HB 2283 (annexation/IGUCA) – Last week, the House non-concurred with Senate amendments to this bill from last session which added its intensive groundwater use control area (IGUCA) language. The bill was sent to conference committee. It is expected that the IGUCA provisions will be stripped from the bill as some groups are pushing for passage of the annexation bill which may be compromised if the IGUCA language remains. As currently framed the bill would prohibit the chief engineer from initiating an IGUCA within a groundwater management district without a request from the district.
HB 2428 (drinking water fees): The House Vision 2020 Committee is considering this newly introduced bill which would assess a sustainability fee of 3 cents per 1,000 gallons of water to public water suppliers served by surface water systems. The fee would not be charged to groundwater systems. For a household using 5,000 gallons per month, the new fee is estimated to add 15 cents to the bill. The fee would generate an estimated $2 million annually to fund monitoring and remediation of sedimentation in water supply lakes.
HB 2493 (dam inspections) – The House Committee on Appropriations introduced this bill last week to repeal K.S.A. 82a-303b, which requires periodic inspections of high-hazard and significant-hazard dams, and authorizes the chief engineer to inspect any dam or other stream obstruction. This appears to be a reaction to the recent shift of dam safety inspection costs back to dam owners, due to state budget reductions. Without the requirement for periodic inspections, the risk of dam failures may increase with adverse impacts to public safety.
The text and status of bills is available on the 
Kansas Legislature’s website.
Exploring Options to Address Groundwater Depletion
Chief Engineer David Barfield has been meeting with groundwater management district (GMD) managers, their Boards, and others over the past couple of years to explore approaches for conserving and extending the useful life of the Ogallala-High Plains aquifer.
The Ogallala aquifer is the main water source for the western third of Kansas. Eighty-five percent of the water pumped in Kansas is for irrigation, and most of it is drawn from the Ogallala aquifer. The rate of withdrawals exceeds the amount of natural recharge from precipitation. Consequently, the water level has been dropping by as much as five feet per year in some locations.
The Kansas Water Appropriation Act requires the chief engineer to regulate and conserve water resources to protect senior water rights and the public interest. Also, the state’s official policy, as stated in the Kansas Water Plan, is to reduce the rate of water level declines in the Ogallala aquifer.
Barfield’s talks with the GMD managers have focused on both improving understanding of the challenge of over-appropriation via groundwater modeling and exploring tools for better managing the aquifer. Tools being discussed include expanded use of voluntary incentive programs to buyout water rights, management programs to conserve water, and options via new or modified rules and regulations to further limit water development and use in over-appropriated areas.
In order to learn more about the drivers of groundwater mining and options to address the problem, Barfield and his staff have been meeting with experts on various aspects of the issue.
One irrigator summed up a significant institutional barrier to slowing the rate of declines: “Even if I wanted to conserve water, my banker won’t let me.” Lenders and crop insurers view crops as being “irrigated” or “dryland”, and generally do not recognize the middle-ground of partially irrigated crops. Kansas Water Office, Kansas State University Extension, and USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) are examining this and seeking ways to facilitate lending and insurance for crops produced with supplemental irrigation. K-State research by Dr. Norman Klocke, funded in part by a grant from RMA, is generating data to show the expected yield of crops with limited irrigation. According to Rebecca Davis of RMA’s Regional Office in Topeka, insurance for limited irrigation might be implemented in Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska as soon as 2011 if the research project can be completed and if the administrative procedures are in place by the fall of 2010.
In November, Barfield met with Dr. Danny Rogers, agricultural engineer with Kansas State University Research and Extension, to learn if increased reliance on irrigation scheduling could be part of the solution. Irrigation scheduling in and of itself does not reduce water consumption, rather, it enables irrigators to optimize yields with a given allocation of water. If the state and/or GMDs move forward with programs to reduce the rate of groundwater declines, irrigation scheduling could be an increasingly important tool for irrigators.
This month, Barfield met with Dr. Bill Golden, natural resources economist with Kansas State University. A 2008 report by Dr. Golden and others examined three options to achieve 30 percent reductions in groundwater withdrawals in northwest Kansas. Their findings suggest that a regulatory approach to incrementally reduce the amount of water applied to irrigated acres would have less economic impacts on the region than a water rights buyout program funded by the state or federal government.
One of the underlying principles of this work is the law of diminishing returns – each additional inch of irrigation increases yield less than the previous inch of irrigation. This is illustrated in the figure accompanying this article. In the example, it took 9 inches of irrigation to raise the yield from 60 bushels to 160 bushels (about a 10-bushel increase per additional inch of irrigation); and it took another 4 inches to raise the yield by another 20 bushels (about a 5-bushel increase per additional inch of irrigation). At some point past the right side of this graph the cost of applying the next inch of irrigation is actually more than the profit from increased yield. So a program to incrementally reduce irrigation quantities through regulation or voluntary “buydowns” (or a combination of the two) would make better economic sense than a “buyout” program because, among other reasons, it would preserve the more profitable irrigation lower on the curve.
Chief Engineer David Barfield will continue working with others on strategies for conserving and extending the useful life of Kansas’ limited water resources in the Ogallala aquifer.
Visit from Australian Officials
Last week, Chief Engineer David Barfield and Kansas Water Office Director Tracy Streeter met with two officials visiting from Australia: Deb Kerr of the National Farmers’ Federation and Stuart Rees of the Australian Trade Commission. Randall Tosh of the Australian Trade Commission’s Kansas City office also participated.
The Australians are touring the U.S. to learn the methods we use to manage water and they wanted to share the Australian perspective. Parts of Australia have been experiencing severe drought for over a decade now, and the central government has made sweeping reforms in water policy as part of their National Water Initiative.
Ms. Kerr said that one of the most significant reforms is transitioning to a system of water rights. In moving from licenses to permanent water rights, the Australian government made large reductions in the authorized quantities to balance water use and available supplies while reserving water for ecological needs. Ms. Kerr said that there is a 10-year “adjustment” period to implement the lower allocations. According to Ms. Kerr, the reductions of allotments are very significant, on the order of 75 percent less for some irrigators and other water users.
Ms. Kerr noted that the drought in Australia has caused vast changes in agricultural practices, including massive infrastructure improvements to “modernize” water delivery and irrigation systems for increased efficiency. Other responses in Australia include large increases in food imports to offset reduced yields, substantial reductions in per capita use of water in cities, and increasing reliance on desalination.
More information about Australia’s National Water Initiative is available from their National Water Commission website.
Upcoming Events
Jan. 27-28: Kansas Water Authority meeting at Topeka
Feb. 2: Meter order public meeting at Washington
Feb. 3: Kansas Water Office-sponsored Water Issues Forum at Wichita
Feb. 4: Kansas Water Office-sponsored Water Issues Forum at Hays
Feb. 4-5: Kansas Natural Resources Conference at Wichita (Chief Engineer David Barfield will be speaking)
Feb. 8-10: Kansas Dam Safety Conference at Hutchinson
Feb. 9: Meter order public meeting at Altoona
Feb. 10: Stream Obstructions Seminar at Hutchinson
Feb. 10: Emergency Action Plans for Dams
For more information about these and other upcoming events, please check our events listings at www.ksda.gov/dwr/events.
