Tag: Irrigation

Categories
Legislature Meeting Reports Policy

Water News: House Committee, upcoming meetings, and Wichita ASR recommendation

My two-year anniversary of retiring as Chief Engineer of the Kansas Division of Water Resources is only a month away. Over that time, COVID has dominated the news and there has not been much in the way of water news.  That seems to be changing. Below are recent highlights and news of meeting to come. 

The House Committee on Water continues its work. The committee’s agenda for the coming week includes presentations from KDA’s Division of Conservation and the Kansas Assoc. of Conservation District on Monday, 1/24; a hearing on HB 2480 on Tuesday, 1/25; and presentations by Kansas Water Office & Kansas Water Authority on the Kansas Water Plan on Wednesday, 1/26.

Hearing on HB 2480 (definition of “water project”) – On Tuesday the committee will have their first hearing on legislation, HB 2480, which according to the Fiscal note “would remove the prohibition of water supply projects from using the Public Water Supply State Revolving Loan Fund if the projects involved a water transfer as defined by KSA 82a-1501, et seq.”  The bill was introduced by a Hays legislator to allow them to qualify for funding for which they are currently ineligible. 

Media attention – Last week, the Kansas Reflector published an article, reprinted in Kansas newspapers on the Committee’s work, featuring its considerations related to water quality, reservoir sedimentation, groundwater conservation, water funding, and water agency restructuring.  See https://www.kansas.com/…/politics…/article257337627.html.

HCOW webpage improvements – We have improved our index page for the Committee’s work at: https://kwrconsulting.com/blog/hcow2022/. In addition to presentation materials, there are links to videos of each of the hearings. The page also includes a summary of the week’s agenda at the top. For more frequent updates, follow us on twitter at @KWRConsulting.

Upcoming meetings:

The Kansas Water Authority is meeting on Thursday, 1/27, starting at 8:30 at the Ramada Inn in Topeka. At this writing, no materials are available, but it should be available early next week at the following link: https://kwo.ks.gov/admin-pages/events-landing-page/2022/01/27/default-calendar/kansas-water-authority-meeting. Virtual attendance is also provided via a link on the page above.  

The 2022 Winter Water Technology Expo will be taking place at the Finney County Fairgrounds in Garden City, Kansas on Thursday, February 3 from 5-9 p.m.  There will be demonstrations provided throughout the night, along with door prizes, food, and beverages. The Expo is free and open to the public. For more information visit: https://www.kwo.ks.gov/news-events/winter-water-technology-expo.  KWRC will participate as an exhibitor. 

Wichita Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) – The City of Wichita has the state’s only active Aquifer Storage and Recovery project. The project was initially developed and approved in two phases. During 2018, the City requested changes to the conditions associated with its existing permits for Phase II of the project. After a public information phase, the matter was set for a formal hearing in 2019, with the Chief Engineer delegating the hearing to Connie Owen and requesting her recommendation on the matter. On January 14, 2022, Ms. Owen provided her summary and recommendations, recommending the City’s requests be denied.  See the link below for her report and the extensive public record. The matter now goes to the Chief Engineer for a decision. https://agriculture.ks.gov/divisions-programs/dwr/managing-kansas-water-resources/aquifer-storage-and-recovery/wichita-asr

Categories
Ogallala

Ogallala CAP Aims to Support Farmers

Introduction: Improving Ogallala Aquifer Research and Outreach


It is well known that North America’s largest freshwater aquifer, the Ogallala Aquifer, has been and continues to be in decline, in both water quantity and quality.  This article will focus on an on-going response of the research community, principally in the region’s land-grant universities, to re-focus its research, collaboration, and outreach approaches to provide the region’s producers with information and tools to optimize and reduce water use, thereby extending the life of the aquifer, while maintains profitability.

Ogallala Aquifer
Map by L. Moore via ogallalawater.org

Many involved in the use or management of the Ogallala aquifer will be familiar with OgallalaWater.org, the website of the Ogallala Water Coordinated Agriculture Project (CAP) as well as it the 8-state Ogallala Summit it helped organize (see below), but the CAP is much more.

In this issue of the KWRC News, we overview the CAP, its objectives, the resources it is working to provide producers and other audiences, and discuss the upcoming events and products planned to complete the project.

Ogallala Water Coordinated Agriculture Project (CAP)

The Ogallala Water Coordinated Agriculture Project (CAP) is a USDA funded research and outreach project focused on helping address issues related to groundwater declines (quantity & quality). The project was initiated in 2016 and will wrap up in the spring of 2021. It includes a team of approximately 70 university researchers, extension specialists, students and post-docs, based in 10 institutions, and 6 hub agricultural experiment stations in 6 Ogallala states.

According to their website, the project’s research and outreach activities aim to support farmer decision making and productivity in the Ogallala region, today and for future generations.

Research 

The heart of the project is research. CAP project leaders are working to make this research more accessible to producers via the website’s Project Activities/Our Research page, with links and summaries of select papers of interest to producers, regularly updated, divided into the following 4 areas: 

A full list of publications produced as part of the project can be found at the following page: http://ogallalawater.org/resources/publications/. Again, the list of research papers to grow over the next year.

Outreach: “Topics”, Summits, and More:

It appears to me the most interesting and practical parts of the website are its “Topics.”  Each topic includes introductions, resource guides, and links to free tools, video tutorials, and papers of interest. The site currently has the following 4 topics, with 6 more to be added in the coming months:

Another key outreach activity is its Ogallala Summits. The first was held in Garden City, Kansas on April 9-10, 2018 in Garden City, Kansas. The results of the Summit can be found at http://ogallalawater.org/2018-ogallala-aquifer-summit/.  The page includes a link to the Summit’s report and links to videos from the key presentations. The project planned a second summit for March 31-April 1 of this year in Amarillo, Texas, but it had to be postponed due to the COVID19 pandemic. The next Summit is planned for the first quarter of 2021.

Amy Kremen, project manager, recently told me in an interview that they are planning to have an expanded selection of webinars in the near future as well.

More to Come / Keeping Up

Again, as the CAP works to wrap up, expect a flurry of additional research papers, expanded Topics, another Summit, webinars, producer stories, and more. 

The project team is also involved in helping to support the development and launch of Master Irrigator programs, such as Colorado Master Irrigator, modeled after a successful program launched in 2016 in the Texas Panhandle by the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District.

To keep track of the work of the Ogallala CAP, sign up for their newsletter at the bottom of their home page.