JUNCTION CITY, Kan.—Kansas’ attorney general promised “fairly quick and fairly decisive” action to try to force Colorado and Nebraska to cut their water use and increase the Republican River’s flow.
Kansas officials say the two states haven’t complied with a settlement reached five years ago in a lawsuit over the river.
Kansas officials estimate that farmers and others in Colorado and Nebraska took 61 billion more gallons of water than they were due in 2003-06. That’s enough to irrigate up to 70,000 acres of corn each of those four years.
In all three states, farmers have worried that cutting back on water will hurt crops and local economies.
While there’s some debate over the numbers, neither Colorado nor Nebraska officials dispute that their states are violating the 2002 settlement, which was approved by the U.S. Supreme Court. But they said their states are taking steps to comply.
Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison said their efforts weren’t enough and that Kansas has waited long enough. Morrison spoke during the annual meeting of the Republican River Compact Administration in Junction City.
Morrison said he’s still considering what to do, but the 2002 agreement allows a state to demand arbitration. He said he’ll make a decision in a few weeks.
“We will take measures to bring both states into compliance, because we have to,” Morrison told the other states’ officials. “You will see some action by the state of Kansas that will be fairly quick and fairly decisive to begin the process of enforcing this agreement.”
The top water officials in Colorado and Nebraska said their states are committed to complying with the agreement.
Ann Bleed, director of Nebraska’s Department of Natural Resources, told Morrison after the meeting that her state is working on it.
North and south forks of the Republican flow from northeast Colorado into Nebraska, converging just over the border. The river then flows through southern Nebraska, into north-central Kansas and Milford Lake northwest of Junction City. Its basin covers almost 25,000 square miles.
In 1943, the three states signed a compact allocating 49 percent of the river’s water to Nebraska, 40 percent to Kansas and 11 percent to Colorado. In 1998, Kansas sued Nebraska, alleging its neighbor to the north violated the compact by allowing thousands of wells to tap the river and its tributaries.
Even though the three states settled the lawsuit, Nebraska and Kansas officials disagree over how to calculate how much water each state is using when determining whether they’re complying with the compact.
Colorado doesn’t dispute Kansas’ estimate that its residents took 15 billion gallons more than they were due in 2003-06. But Ken Knox, Colorado’s acting state water engineer, said the overuse has declined with time.
Among the steps Colorado is taking is developing rules to regulate high-capacity wells—something new for the Republican River basin there.
“Some of our compact compliance actions are working,” Knox said after the meeting. “It just takes a bit for the impacts to hit the stream.”
Kansas contends Nebraska took nearly 47 billion more gallons than it was due in 2003-06. Bleed said that figure is too high, though she declined to say what her state’s accounting shows.
She noted that over the past two years, Nebraska set aside nearly $9 million to purchase more than 19 billion gallons of surface water to increase the Republican’s flow into Kansas.
Also, Nebraska set aside $2 million for a program to clear vegetation from the riverbed east of Harlan County Lake, which keeps water from getting to Kansas.
Kansas officials said Nebraska needs to cut groundwater pumping.
“We came here today hoping to hear what we think is a meaningful plan by Nebraska to come into compliance,” Morrison said. “Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve heard it.”
Bleed said Nebraska’s research shows that reducing groundwater pumping isn’t likely to increase the Republican’s flow significantly in the short term. Purchasing surface water, she said, will “get water to Kansas as quickly as possible.”
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