House panel explores idea of aqueduct across Kansas

The executive director of a southwest Kansas water district Wednesday urged legislators to seriously consider the prospect of diverting millions of acre feet of water from the Missouri River to sustain agriculture production across the state.

Mark Rude, who leads Groundwater Management District No. 3 in Garden City, said intensive irrigation of crops was draining the Ogallala Aquifer and solutions, including construction of a concrete river channel across the state at the cost of billions of dollars, should be on the table.

He requested the Legislature quickly take action to reserve 4 million acre feet of "high flow" water from the Missouri River for the project, even if that water was never actually drawn, as work advanced on a $300,000 study of building an aqueduct from northeast Kansas approximately 360 miles into the semi-arid southwest corner of the state.

In drought-stricken southwest Kansas, about 2 million acre feet is consumed each year for irrigation and other purposes while recharge of the underground natural aquifer is less than 200,000 acre feet annually.

"We can't keep this up," Rude said. "The future of Kansas will be written in water."

In 1982, a study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated building an intake near White Cloud in northeast Kansas, diverting high-flow water from the Missouri River to a reservoir, and moving that water by pipeline or aqueduct to southwest Kansas would cost $4.4 billion. The annual operating expense, according to the Corps of Engineers, would have been $475 million annually.

The Kansas Department of Agriculture supports completion of the study updating that 32-year-old report.

Chris Wilson, a former attorney in the state agriculture department living in Alma, said the Kansas Aqueduct Coalition had been formed to promote exploration of ideas for building a water channel across the state.

"We don't know where it's going," she said. "The object is to get the word out. It would be awesome to have a lengthy river through the Flint Hills."

The coalition's statement to the House committee said significant decline in the Ogallala Aquifer was "causing economic value declines in Kansas every year" and steps should be taken by the state to bolster access to water in areas of intensive irrigation.

Creation of water security across Kansas will help the agriculture industry grapple with rising demand for beef, dairy and grain products, the coalition said.