New water regulation in Kansas promotes water conservation but could harm businesses

TOPEKA (KSNT) — The Kansas Department of Agriculture (KDA) is proposing a big change on how it regulates water here in Kansas, that some are saying could harm businesses.

KDA hosted a public hearing on Monday morning, outlining a proposed change to their rules and regulations. They are hoping to change the way they determine water distribution in certain areas of the state.

Currently, the department manages four "Local Enhanced Management Areas" in the state of Kansas. In these areas, KDA closely manages water usage to determine ways to promote water conservation.

For many of the businesses, farms, or private well owners in the state, KDA allocates a certain amount of water to these entities in order to manage usage. They currently determine how much water to allocated based on previous usage data.

However, a state official tells us, some entities were taking advantage of this rule by using more water than they needed in order to get more water moving forward. As a result, KDA wants to remove this rule, and use other tools and data to allocate water.

While officials tell us this could help with water conservation efforts, members of the Groundwater Management Division expressed concerns with this. They say, removing the regulation would hurt high end users such as some businesses and farms. This is because their water allocation would no longer be determined by how much they use.

Trevor Ahring with Groundwater Management District 3 tells us, he hopes KDA will not move forward with the proposal.

"If you're willing to turn a 15 hundred gallon per minute well into what's functionally a 45 gallon per minute well, that person is going to have trouble making ends meet," said Ahring. "We would just like the rules to stay as they were."

Additionally, Earl Lewis with the Department of Agriculture assured us that the department will take public comments into consideration, and believes the goal needs to be conservation.

"We're still in the process of looking at all those comments," said Lewis. "We'll take those in and go back to see if there's anything we need to change. We're faced with a situation where we've got a declining resource, so the question is are we going to manage that for the long term."

Lewis tells me, the Kansas Department of Agriculture will move forward with the new proposal in about a month or two, unless they decide to further change the amendment.

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