All the snow this winter has helped improve the drought conditions across Kansas. But it’s just the proverbial drop in the bucket of what we need to make sure we’ll still have drinking water for our kids and grandkids, especially in parts of Western Kansas.
The governor and leading Republicans have said securing the state’s water future is a top priority this year. But some say there’s one practice holding up the process.
Drought Conditions
Miller Drilling has stayed busy this last year. One could almost say, too busy. KAKE News caught up with them one day as they were drilling a new well in Hutchinson.
“Basically, they don’t have any water,” said Adam Miller.
It’s a refrain this Central Kansas company has been hearing for years.
“We had a major drought back in 2011 and ’12, and the groundwater never really recovered from that,” he said.
It’s only gotten louder and more persistent recently.
“I think probably since about August, probably a third of our wells have been emergency jobs here. People are flat running out of water,” said Ez Miller. “Forty-nine years since I started drilling, it’s probably about as bad as I’ve ever seen it.”
Retired farmer and current state lawmaker, Joe Seiwert of Pretty Prairie knows exactly what the Millers are talking about. He’s had to re-drill the well for his home multiple times, deeper every time.
“If you can’t get water, what’s your house going to be worth? Who’s going to buy it?” Seiwert asked.
It’s just one of many concerns he has about the falling water levels in Reno County, where his home is.
“Some places, we might have been able to get by with a 30 or 40-foot well, and some of those now we’re going down close to 200 feet,” Adam Miller said.
A recent survey in Wichita showed the top priority Wichitans want the City Council to work on this next year is drinking water.
So it might surprise you to learn, that drinking water isn’t the biggest use of water in Kansas, a state where agriculture runs so much.
Agriculture and Irrigation
“About 83-84% of the water use in the state of Kansas is for irrigation,” said Earl Lewis, director of the Department of Agriculture’s Division of Water Resources. “It is by far our biggest user, and it is primarily the reason that we’re seeing water levels decline in some of those areas.”
It’s an effect Seiwert says he’s seen on his land.
“That river was a huge river,” he said, pointing to what’s now a nearly dry river bed that leads through his land to Cheney Reservoir. “When I was a kid. Grew up in our backyard. You could hardly walk across it, because it was 16-18 inches deep. Now it’s three or four inches deep.”
When asked what he thinks has changed, he said, “The 1200 and some irrigation circles in Reno County along the rivers, you know, pulling out a million gallons a day.”
The State’s Fault
He says it’s not the irrigators who are at fault, though, but the State of Kansas.
“It’s not the farmer’s fault. He cannot pump that water without that permit. I can’t put in a well without a permit,” Seiwert said.
Then he repeated himself, “It’s not the farmer’s fault. He is doing what he has to do to keep his water permit. You know? He’s kind of between a rock and a hard spot, too.”
Use it or Lose it
It’s a policy Seiwert refers to as “Use it or Lose it.” If an irrigator doesn’t use all the water their permit allows in a given year, they lose their permit.
It’s a policy Lewis says doesn’t really exist anymore.
“That’s always out there, but it’s really more most, for the most part, myth, in fact,” Lewis said.
That’s because of a 2012 change in the law that allows irrigators to get what’s called a Multi-Year Flex Account, where they get a five-year allocation of water with no limits on what they can use in any one particular year, as long as they don’t exceed the five year total.
“People tend to save about 15% just by having that flexibility,” said Rep. Jim Minnix, R Scott City.
Minnix is the Chair of the Kansas House Committee on Water and a farmer who uses irrigation wells.
“From an economic standpoint, it makes all kinds of sense. If we’re in an extreme drought and someone has already planted corn and invested thousands of dollars an acre in their crop out there…and you want to save your crop, it’d be nice to be able to water it. And then given the next year, if you have more rainfall, higher than average, be able to save some.”
Minnix says his committee is working on adding more flexibility to those accounts. He adds there are also fines in place for people who over-irrigate or wastewater.
“Those have been on the books for many, many years. There’s a mentality of irrigators out there, a small percentage of them, want to pump as much as possible in a given year, whether they need to or not, just to have a high historical pumping usage rate in case they get a 25% cut…from the State of Kansas. That mentality is antiquated,” he said.
Seiwert, who also serves on the Water Committee, says the accounts are a step in the right direction, but not enough. Not yet.
“(When irrigators turn the water on,) we’re pumping a third of the Mississippi every day,” he said. “When they’re using it.”
The Governor’s Take
So while KAKE News was at the Statehouse in January, Senior Political Reporter Pilar Pedraza asked the governor if there was any talk of dropping the water allocations entirely from the permitting process.
“There is talk particularly, use it and lose it. That’s such a dumb thing, so dumb, wherever it is,” Gov. Laura Kelly, D Kansas, said. “That whole use it or lose it has always been bad policy, so we are having conversations with that.”
Lewis pointed out a lot of the issues surrounding water use today came from decisions made generations ago.
“These decisions that led us to this point where we have a declining water situation really were public policy decisions going clear back to the 1950s,” he said.
The question is, will a Republican supermajority get along well enough with a Democratic governor to make changes that could upset some Kansans?
“You have a lot of people who have a lot of skin in that game,” Kelly said. “So it’s sensitive.”
Politics at the Door
But it’s something lawmakers say they’re making progress on.
Minnix said the state has made great advances since 2021, adding that last year the Water Committee got lawmakers to increase funding to water programs in Kansas, programs like loans to small cities that need financial help to upgrade their water systems.
“You heard earlier, $350 million in requests for a… $19 million fund,” said Minnix. “There’s that much demand, even in our small municipals out there to upgrade their water systems, drinking water or wastewater.”
As he spoke to committee members during their first meeting of the 2025 Legislative Session, he asked them to leave their political differences at the committee room door.
“‘I’m asking you, as committee members, to come in this door, leave the Republican/Democrat stuff outside, leave the…rural and urban, everything,” Minnix said. “When we come in here, we’re…working on policy to improve the water situation here in the State of Kansas.”
After the meeting, Minnix said part of the challenge in the committee is educating people with antiquated ideas about water usage.
“The people that are still practicing (use it or lose it) don’t realize what has happened in the last 20 years,” he said. “It’s an antiquated thought pattern and we need to educate them that they’re not helping themselves as much as they think they are.”
“It’s a cultural shift as much as anything,” Lewis agreed, “Getting people to understand they can use less water and still be productive in their farm.”
As reported on KAKE News
