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Water on the High Plains
Arkansas River litigation ends
One ongoing struggle over water use has ended, at least for now. This summer the case of Kansas v. Colorado ended after more than two decades. . In 1985, Kansas alleged that Colorado was violating the 1948 Arkansas River Compact by reducing state-line flows in the Arkansas Valley. In 1995 the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Kansas. Ultimately the damages to be paid by Colorado were determined to be 34 million dollars. Remedies were eventually decided upon to prevent this from happening again. David Barfield, the chief engineer of the Kansas Division of water resources says that was all summed up in a final decree in January of 2008.
That left only one matter pending and that was an evaluation of the sufficiency of their rules requiring replacements of depletions from groundwater pumping. That was done late last year and early this year. There were some disagreements but ultimately the two states developed a 15 page agreement on sort of adjustments to the use rules to deal with Kansas concerns. Part of that agreement was letting go of the court's retained jurisdiction on this evaluation.
Barfield and Colorado State Engineer Dick Wolfe came to the agreement together. That 15 page agreement was filed with the supreme court in august, thereby ending about 24 years of litigation.
The decree and the use rules require the determination of the presumptive stream depletion factor, you know the amount that's presumed to be depleted from the stream from groundwater pumping and that value is determined in the use rules. We basically have a process in which we do model runs and determine if that factor is correct and if it's not we adjust it. So, that's what the agreement does.
Will this agreement prevent future conflicts between Kansas and Colorado over the Arkansas River? Barfield says he can't say that definitively, but he does it's encouraging that the two states worked through the issue and that the agreement signals that the states are committed to working together. That's important, because water sharing between the states is an ongoing process. For example, Kansas is making sure that changing irrigation practices in Colorado won't diminish future river levels.
People are converting from gravity systems to center pivots, which I know sounds like a good thing, and it is, but the concern that Kansas has is that when you do that conversion there can be a reduction in the return flows that ultimately get to Kansas. And so they're developing rules and allowing us to comment on them to ensure that as those efficiency improvements are done Kansas is not shorted of water.
Dick Wolfe says that Colorado has been working with the state of Kansas on the efficiency issue for the last couple of months and wants Kansan input before submitting the rules to the Colorado water courts. Wolfe doesn't believe that any of the ongoing issues arising under the Arkansas River Compact are litigious in nature.
Some of the other remaining issues principally deal with some of the accounting issues, like with John Martin Reservoir, there are various accounts in that reservoir that people utilize for compact compliance and operation of just their normal irrigation systems, water users in both KS and CO utilize storage accounts in that reservoir. So, there continues to be some discussion and refinement of some issues there.
As to what the end of Kansas v. Colorado will mean to Coloradans, Wolfe thinks it'll just be relief.
The culmination of that or the end of it doesn't particularly mean anything other than maybe a sigh of relief that they can't put that chapter behind them and now give some more certainty to their operations which have been under litigation all these years. So, certainly I think that's the main thing that they will probably see out of this now.
Wolfe says the other key benefits from the case are the lessons learned about how to avoid similar problems in the future. That's one reason Colorado is proactively addressing the improvement of irrigation efficiency. I'm Lindsey Fields, HPPR News.
© Copyright 2012, hppr
(2009-09-08)
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One ongoing struggle over water use has ended, at least for now. This summer the case of Kansas v. Colorado ended after more than two decades. . In 1985, Kansas alleged that Colorado was violating the 1948 Arkansas River Compact by reducing state-line flows in the Arkansas Valley. In 1995 the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Kansas. Ultimately the damages to be paid by Colorado were determined to be 34 million dollars. Remedies were eventually decided upon to prevent this from happening again. David Barfield, the chief engineer of the Kansas Division of water resources says that was all summed up in a final decree in January of 2008.
That left only one matter pending and that was an evaluation of the sufficiency of their rules requiring replacements of depletions from groundwater pumping. That was done late last year and early this year. There were some disagreements but ultimately the two states developed a 15 page agreement on sort of adjustments to the use rules to deal with Kansas concerns. Part of that agreement was letting go of the court's retained jurisdiction on this evaluation.
Barfield and Colorado State Engineer Dick Wolfe came to the agreement together. That 15 page agreement was filed with the supreme court in august, thereby ending about 24 years of litigation.
The decree and the use rules require the determination of the presumptive stream depletion factor, you know the amount that's presumed to be depleted from the stream from groundwater pumping and that value is determined in the use rules. We basically have a process in which we do model runs and determine if that factor is correct and if it's not we adjust it. So, that's what the agreement does.
Will this agreement prevent future conflicts between Kansas and Colorado over the Arkansas River? Barfield says he can't say that definitively, but he does it's encouraging that the two states worked through the issue and that the agreement signals that the states are committed to working together. That's important, because water sharing between the states is an ongoing process. For example, Kansas is making sure that changing irrigation practices in Colorado won't diminish future river levels.
People are converting from gravity systems to center pivots, which I know sounds like a good thing, and it is, but the concern that Kansas has is that when you do that conversion there can be a reduction in the return flows that ultimately get to Kansas. And so they're developing rules and allowing us to comment on them to ensure that as those efficiency improvements are done Kansas is not shorted of water.
Dick Wolfe says that Colorado has been working with the state of Kansas on the efficiency issue for the last couple of months and wants Kansan input before submitting the rules to the Colorado water courts. Wolfe doesn't believe that any of the ongoing issues arising under the Arkansas River Compact are litigious in nature.
Some of the other remaining issues principally deal with some of the accounting issues, like with John Martin Reservoir, there are various accounts in that reservoir that people utilize for compact compliance and operation of just their normal irrigation systems, water users in both KS and CO utilize storage accounts in that reservoir. So, there continues to be some discussion and refinement of some issues there.
As to what the end of Kansas v. Colorado will mean to Coloradans, Wolfe thinks it'll just be relief.
The culmination of that or the end of it doesn't particularly mean anything other than maybe a sigh of relief that they can't put that chapter behind them and now give some more certainty to their operations which have been under litigation all these years. So, certainly I think that's the main thing that they will probably see out of this now.
Wolfe says the other key benefits from the case are the lessons learned about how to avoid similar problems in the future. That's one reason Colorado is proactively addressing the improvement of irrigation efficiency. I'm Lindsey Fields, HPPR News.
© Copyright 2012, hppr
