From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Kansas Hunts for Water as Aquifer Levels Fall   
   By Shannon Najmabadi, March 22, 2023, WSJ   
      
   GARDEN CITY, Kan.—Southwest Kansas officials have long pushed a moonshot   
   aqueduct project to send Missouri River water across the state to their   
   region, where a $12.5 billion agricultural economy relies on a dwindling   
   underground aquifer.      
      
   While the effort has been dismissed as legally impossible and expensive, the   
   persistence of the idea demonstrates how drought and a steadily shrinking   
   water supply have created broad consensus that water policies need to be   
   overhauled. In Kansas, where    
   federal data shows that nearly every county was experiencing some level of   
   drought at the end of 2022, water is among the most urgent issues facing the   
   state legislature this year.   
      
   “Water has a certain value,” said Clay Scott, a Ulysses KS farmer and one   
   of the aqueduct’s proponents. “Every year it just continues to climb.”   
      
   Projects that move water have been used to fuel development or to irrigate   
   crops in Western states such as Arizona and California. The Kansas aqueduct   
   would be farther east—reflecting spreading concern about the scarcity of   
   water amid a changing    
   climate and growing population centers.   
      
   Similar projects are being discussed elsewhere. A groundwater-conservation   
   district in Texas is interested in studying water-transport projects,   
   including a version of the Kansas aqueduct route extended to Texas, said   
   district manager Steve Walthour.    
      
   Meanwhile, some arid states have looked east to boost limited water supplies.   
   The Arizona state legislature in 2021 asked Congress to study a plan to   
   transport Mississippi River floodwaters to the Colorado River, upon which   
   seven states including Arizona    
   rely.    
      
   The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers first assessed the feasibility for a Kansas   
   aqueduct in 1982, as part of a federal study looking at ways to supplement the   
   Ogallala Aquifer, the region’s critical source of groundwater. A 2015 update   
   of the study    
   estimated it would cost between $5 billion and $20 billion to build the   
   concrete-lined canal system and up to $522 million in annual energy costs to   
   pump the water uphill to its terminal reservoir in western Kansas.   
      
   Proponents of the Kansas aqueduct say it is needed to sustain the economy of   
   the state’s southwest and could sell water to other Western areas that have   
   already taken extreme measures to conserve water or find new water sources.    
      
   Without a means to augment the region’s underground reserves, “we will   
   continue to dry up the infrastructure for feed yards and dairies and grain   
   elevators and cotton gins,” said Mr. Scott, who is a member of the board for   
   the Southwest Kansas    
   Groundwater Management District.     
      
   Opponents say the idea is too expensive, and would need to fend off a likely   
   onslaught of lawsuits from states along the Missouri River or landowners whose   
   property would be used to build a canal system.    
      
   “The legal, economic, physical and regulatory hurdles this thing faces are   
   virtually infinite,” said Burke Griggs, a law professor at Washburn   
   University in Topeka, Kan., who is an expert in water law and who previously   
   represented Kansas in federal    
   and interstate water issues. “There’s no way this will ever be built.”     
      
   Even those who have taken no position on an aqueduct say much of the aquifer   
   could run dry before the project is complete.    
      
   “By the time you got done with studying, planning, litigating,   
   constructing,” said Connie Owen, who heads the Kansas Water Office, an   
   agency that writes the state’s water plan, “it is too late.”    
      
   The Ogallala Aquifer lies under parts of eight central U.S. states, running   
   from South Dakota to Texas. It adds $3.8 billion to the value of the land in   
   western Kansas, one 2022 study found.    
      
   Blake Brownie Wilson, with the Kansas Geological Survey, says 80% to 90% of   
   the aquifer’s water in Kansas goes to irrigation. In some parts of southwest   
   Kansas, the aquifer has dropped more than 100 feet since it began being mined.   
   About 30% of it had    
   been pumped as of 2013. Another 39% was expected to be gone by 2063 given   
   current rates of use.    
      
   In December, a board in the Kansas Water Office recommended that the state   
   should stop its policy of slowly draining the aquifer. “Planned depletion   
   was the operative approach,” Ms. Owen said. “It still is.”   
      
   Recent drought has increased pressure on the aquifer’s use. Average   
   groundwater levels in western and south-central Kansas fell by nearly 2 feet   
   last year, according to preliminary data compiled by the Kansas Geological   
   Survey. Groundwater levels fell    
   nearly 3 feet in southwest Kansas, which is experiencing the most intense and   
   widespread drought nationwide. Less than an inch of rainfall typically seeps   
   into the aquifer to recharge it each year.    
      
   To address falling water levels, some farmers have banded together to cut back   
   on their water use. Many have switched to less water-intensive crops, such as   
   cotton or sorghum, and bought soil-moisture probes and nozzles that dribble   
   out water in efforts    
   to reduce the amount lost to evaporation. Groundwater-management districts in   
   north and central west Kansas have seen success: In one case, a group of   
   farmers reduced their water use by 20% over a five-year period. Their profits   
   went up during that time.    
      
   The groundwater district that manages water use in southwest Kansas thinks   
   conserving water is appropriate but not enough. Officials in the district have   
   been the primary proponents of the aqueduct plan in Kansas.    
      
   Early renderings show the aqueduct would draw water from the Missouri River   
   upstream of Kansas City, Kan., at times when water levels exceed what is   
   needed for navigation and current uses. The water would be moved 360 miles to   
   a western Kansas reservoir.    
   A siphon would be used to move the water under the Kansas River; 16 pumping   
   plants would lift the water.    
      
   Water could then be transported to farms or sold to booming communities in the   
   West, said Mr. Scott.    
      
   The project remains a long shot. Kansas lawmakers this year are focused on   
   bills aimed at promoting conservation and dedicating tax revenue to water   
   projects.    
      
   But proponents say it is the right time to look into an aqueduct because of   
   how long it would take to be built.    
      
   “We can’t afford to wait any longer,” said Mr. Scott.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/kansas-hunts-for-water-as-aquifer-l   
   vels-fall-41d10313   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)