An Early Kansas Irrigation Plan

It was the Fall of 1882 and things were dry in SW Kansas.  Two brothers came up from Spearville with a plan to irrigate BIG from the Arkansas River in Gray County.  They dreamed of a large irrigation canal and a series of peripherals that could water quite a stretch of land.  They surely had ideas, but what they lacked was capital.  For the funding, they turned to a millionaire acquaintance from their erstwhile home town of Rochester, NY - one Asa Soule.

Mr Soule was known as the Hops Bitter King who had made his fortune selling a patented syrup made from bitters, hops and alcohol that was guaranteed to cure whatever ailed you.  He was also a man who wanted to grow his fortune, so he moved to Gray County and invested heavily into the brothers' plans, as well as land and city lots. 

The main canal of the Eureka Irrigation Canal Company was 96 miles long and was dug along the North side of the Ark River through both Gray and Ford Counties.  The workers on his canals were mostly farmers working while not farming.  It took two years to complete it, but unfortunately, the project hit major snags upon its completion - including flood damage to the diversion dam, very leaky soils and very undependable river flows.

The whole undertaking was soon known as Soule's Folly, but he managed to sell it to foreign investors.  Over the ensuing years the canal changed hands a number of times but never became a profitable venture. It did, however help lure many settlers into the region on the expectation of irrigation water - most of whom managed to stay on.  It also set the mindset for surface water irrigation that would persist for a long time - at least until groundwater was developed. Vestiges of the canals can still be seen if you know where to look.

Irrigation in SW Kansas today is strongly groundwater based.  For a good look, visit the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District No. 3.

Rain, Irrigation and Declines in GMD 4

One would hope that irrigation, precipitation and groundwater level changes are all relational - the more it rains, the less we irrigate and the slower the water level decline goes.  The following are data for the 10 Counties in NW Kansas for the years 2000 through 2012.  

Col 1 = Year; Col 2 = Annual average precip (10 stations); Col 3 = Reported water use (GMD 4 total, all uses except domestic); Col 4 = Acres reported irrigated; Col 5 = Inches of water reported applied per reported acre irrigated; and Col 6 = January 1 (following year) water level change.  Unfortunately, 2012 data for water use and acres irrigated are not yet available.

The water level change data come from 275 observation wells across the entire GMD area that are measured each January. 

Year  Precip     Wtr Use      Ac Irr      In/Ac      WL Chg 2000   16.72      497,737      386,055        1.29      -1.16 2001   19.79      424,223      380,152        1.12      -0.41 2002   11.30      527,661      386,350        1.37      -1.51 2003   14.06      484,311      386,979        1.25      -1.14 2004   20.13      479,461      385,161        1.24      -0.6 2005   21.15      397,666      381,202        1.04      -0.57 2006   19.37      435,017      379,479        1.15      -0.29 2007   17.07      417,848      377,010        1.11      -0.89 2008   21.65      406,801      377,691        1.08      -0.42 2009   25.59      301,350      376,254        0.80        0.1 2010   17.45      368,030      376,969        0.98      -0.5 2011   22.48      435,900      380,667        1.15      -0.59 2012   11.76      -1.39
I see a pretty strong correlation (inverse) between rainfall and annual declines - Col 2 and Col 6.  When the rainfall increases, the water level decline rate decreases.  Just eyeballing the numbers, it appears to me that with average annual rainfall (18.35 inches) we'd expect about a .6 foot decline.  With 23-24 inches of rainfall, a .25 foot decline, and with 12-15 inches somewhere around a 1.5 foot decline. I see a little less correlation between the reported water use and the water level change, but there is still some relationship.  It is quite true in the extremes, anyway - the wettest year (2009) saw the least water used and the smallest water level change while the driest year (2002) saw the greatest water use and the largest water level change. Most can probably see the inherent sense of all this, but may wonder why there is not a perfect relationship between rainfall, pumpage and declines.  Well there are a number of reasons why we'll never see such an absolute relationship:
1)  The rainfall data provided is annual precipitation.  Six months out of the year the rainfall is far less relevant to crops and irrigation.  There is probably a more relevant relationship between in-season rainfall and what we're trying to show, but this is hard to flesh out when our region gets just 60-65% of its total rainfall in season. 2)  The rainfall data is highly variable - meaning that while the entire NW Kansas average may have been 20 inches, we easily could have had irrigation areas that only got 14 while other areas got 23.    3)  The quality of rainfall is never known in the data.  You might get 20 inches of annual rain, but if it came in 5 hard rains of 4 inches each over a three hour period, most of it ran off and did not contribute to soil moisture conditions that would allow for reduced irrigation. 4)  Any water level change is a function of natural recharge and pumping withdrawals. While more rain generally means increased recharge (and reduced pumpage) it is not an exact relationship (see reason 3) above). 5)  Cropping is in constant flux and different crops affect withdrawals differently - both the timing and quantity. 6)  A late freeze in the Spring, hail, excessive insect or weed pressures all affect an irrigated crop and the amount of water applied.  It may rain 15 inches, but if a late Spring freeze takes out your corn crop, irrigation is greatly reduced that year. Anyway, I think you get the picture.  But I have to say, all-in-all, there is a pretty good relationship in GMD 4 between rainfall, irrigation use and groundwater declines.  Now, if it'd only rain - at the right time, in the right amount and with the perfect intensity...

Spate Irrigation? A New One On Me

Cruising the web I ran across the term "spate irrigation" and wondered what it was.  Yes, there is a web site for this type of irrigation - which is essentially using flood flows beneficially in a desert (or near desert) environment.  It's a fairly low-tech irrigation system that uses gabions and/or low head dam structures in and near the river beds to divert flood flows onto adjacent lands desiring to be irrigated.  As you might expect, the irrigation opportunities are hit and miss from year to year, and the system maintenance can be an on-going endeavor.

This is another of those very old technologies utilized in the Middle East for several thousand years now.  The listed benefits include groundwater recharge along with all the usual suspects, which caught my eye.  I guess every little bit helps.  I also like the philosophy of getting a little unexpected benefit from the flood flows rather than trying to completely master not only them, but the entire river system as well - 24/7. 

I think the reason I've never heard of this type of irrigation is because Colby and Northwest Kansas is not yet considered a desert - although it's sure feeling like one of late.  Then again, maybe I just don't get out enough.  In any event, running across this type of irrigation system is clearly another reason to keep exploring our water world and writing these fresh-to-me, blog posts.  I hope you've learned something new, as well.

A New Spin on Crop Circles

                              REALLY!?

This ad picture from an irrigation pivot company implies that this pattern of irrigation center pivots goes on for a while, and should be replicated everywhere possible.  Well, I don't know many places in the world where this kind of concentrated water use would be all that intelligent.  There probably are some, but not around my neck of the woods.  So, wherever this photo is, I'm guessing there is a local water supply under some level of stress.  Well managed irrigation development is a good thing, but limits to that development are exceeded more often than not, which stresses the water supply - be it ground or surface water.  I personally think the ad would have been just as effective if a more reasonable pattern of pivot development had been selected.  It would seem more intelligent to me, anyway.

KSU and Some Irrigation Tools

"Many irrigators are facing challenges because of declining water yields from their wells. To optimize water applications with reduced irrigation capacity, irrigators are considering shifts in cropping patterns. Irrigators who have declining well capacities, need to know what crop combinations would most likely result in the most net return. This may require them to allocate both land and water to multiple crops. With powerful personal computers common to consumers in the recent years, producers can evaluate different crop mixes to determine the most probable best allocation of resource by the use of compter models, such as the Crop Water Allocator (CWA).  The CWA is a seasonal planning tool to find the optimum net return from all of the combinations of crops, irrigation amounts, and land allocations that the program user wants to examine."

Even without being motivated by reduced water capabilities, this tool is a very interesting exercise at looking into various combinations of crops and acreages that may surprise you with their profitability - or lack thereof.  There are a lot of operation-specific values, rates and numbers you must input as you set up your fields, but the "what-if" capabilities are well worth it.  While the current version is a downloadable item, KSU is working on a web-based version that should be even better.  If you're a crop producer, and especially if you have limited water, you may want to give this free program a look-see.  All the background data (rainfall, ET reference values, etc.) are geared for Kansas, but these data from any region in the world can be manually input as well.
 
KSU also has a related program called Crop Yield Predictor which is also handy, but for a different aspect of a producer's operation.  This program helps predict crop yields with limited irrigation.  This program can also be used to determine some of the inputs into the crop water allocator program.

Kansas Irrigation Water Use by System

I've said from the outset that I didn't think subsurface drip irrigation systems were going to save that much water - consumptive water use anyway.  I gave the industry folks the benefit of the doubt who were arguing that at least the users would pump less water.  This I said was likely, but held firm that these systems would not significantly reduce CU in our hydrologic setting.

I now read the Kansas Water Office's latest irrigation statistics report (Kansas Irrigation Water Use 2008) and notice Table 8 - Irrigation water use by system by location.  By the way, Kansas does have an excellent annual water use reporting system that is driven by a high percentage of metered water use.  The 2008 metered wells comprised 89% of all the irrigation wells in the state.  Anyway, looking at GMD areas, the reported subsurface drip system water use in 2008 was:

GMD 1:  1.09 Acft/Ac;
GMD 2:  .55 Acft/Ac; 
GMD 3:  1.41 Acft/Ac; 
GMD 4:  1.10 Acft/Ac;
GMD 5:  .86 Acft/Ac.

These reported SDI water use quantities were higher than both the flood and pivot system values for most of the 5 GMDs in Kansas.  Only in GMD 2 were the SDI values lower than the flood and pivot system numbers, and in GMD 5 lower than only the pivot irrigated acres.  This means these reported numbers were higher for some 85% of the total 12,923 SDI acres reported irrigated in the state in 2008.  I didn't expect to see this, but it seems to clearly confirm my prediction that consumptive use has not been reduced by conversion to SDI systems. 

However, it is a small sample (12,923 acres of the total 3.03 million irrigated acres) and only a single year, so I'm not going to get too excited.  Besides, when brought up before, the SDI proponents are always quick to say that it takes a little time to learn how to use the system properly, and many users over-apply in the first year or two.  Maybe, but by the time the next Irrigation Report comes out, this possible cause of higher reported water use should no longer be available.

And my new prediction is:  Even if the next report numbers show lower SDI use in Acft/Ac than the flood and pivot acres, we'll still argue about the real benchmark - what has the consumptive water use done as a result of these conversions?

Emergency Drought Permits in Kansas

Just a few weeks ago the Division of Water Resources announced the offering of an emergency drought term permit for water right owners looking at exceeding their annual water right amounts in order to complete the 2011 crop.  The drought in much of southern and central Kansas has been one for the ages to be sure.  The feeling was to shut off irrigation to stay within the limits of the water right and lose all or a substantial amount of the crop production would be a waste of the state's water resources invested in the production to date, so some mechanism needed to be provided to bring in this crop.

Basically the emergency permits require a water right owner to set aside his or her annual water right and be provided a two-year term permit (2011 and 2012) worth double the amount under the regular water right.  What ever is overpumped this year must be compensated for next year.  The need apparently was there because DWR has now eclipsed 800 term permits in the works - in literally 3-4 weeks time.  There is more to this program, but it clearly is a short-term, attempt to get through this devastatingly dry year.

More funadamentally, however, it could be argued that every water right owner knew on January 1, 2011 how much water he or she had for the year.  The safe decision would always be to plant only the acres and crop populations that could be completed ONLY with the irrigation water (assuming NO rainfall is received).  The problem with this mindset is that in the other 68 years out of 70 they underproduce because they fail to take production advantage of whatever rainfall is received.  When it all boils down, it's an economic and risk management system.  Seems like most producers have economic production goals and a risk tolerance well above the safest levels.  So we tend to operate for the bounty of the moderately dry, average and wet years and scramble for the fixes in the driest of the dry years.  Nothing more than human nature I suspect.  And in the end, the fixes do keep additional water from getting used, so it seems like reasonable business to me.

Water Representation in Kansas

It's been an ongong discussion in Kansas since I came in 1977 - the irrigation water users are too well represented on the water policy-making boards and this results in the situation of the fox guarding the henhouse. 

They argue that the irrigation folks dominate the GMD's (which are supposed to represent all water users and water uses), and worse yet, the Kansas Water Authority, which is the major policy-making body in the state for water - all of this at the expense of John Q. Public and every other water user group.  They point to the fact that irrigation uses 80% (or more) of the water in the state, which is correct, as if this unbalanaced water usage is because irrigators have come to dominate the policy-making water venues.  I'd argue that irrigation has always used a dominant portion of the state's water and because they did, they were provided the representational numbers they have.  To have done otherwise would have unfairly under-represented this group.

It's not a lot different than Legislative representation.  Populous Johnson County gets more House seats than does rural Thomas County.  But it's not that the Johnson County population is larger because they have more Legislative representation to work the system better, but because the people were already there and deserved that level of representation out of fairness.

One difference in these two comparative systems is that Legislative representation gets adjusted every 10 years through reapportionment - to keep the balance - whereas water representation does not.  It'd be an interesting exercise to see what GMD and KWA representation irrigation water use should actually be getting based on use, and also how a reapportionment process would shift these numbers over time.  Irrigation water use in GMD 4 pushes 98% of the total use, so I suspect our irrigators could be under-represented on some of the boards and authorities.  Hey, but who's complaining?

Besides, in the final analysis, the Kansas Legislature decides all state policy, and in this venue I assure you that the irrigation industry is under represented.  Besides, many think the lawyers and the real estate folks are the foxes guarding the legislative henhouse, so let's deal with that issue too.  Or, we could go Issue and Referendum and bypass the entire representational system altogether.

Energy Beets?

I see now there is a push in North Dakota on growing energy beets for ethanol production rather than corn.  The pitch:  Energy beets:  help the soil in that they use less nitrogen than corn; are tolerant to saline soils; deep rooted so they mop up nutrients escaping from shallow rooted crops; require only 1.5 gal water to produce 1 gallon of ethanol compared to corn's 2.5 gallons; produces twice the ethanol per acre than corn; and irrigated yields are 41 tons per acre.

What the article I am reading never says is how much irrigation water it takes to grow a 41-ton per acre crop.  While I can appreciate the fact that the processing water is significantly less for beets than for corn, this has never been the real issue for me as a water manager.  What is the issue is the irrigation water requirement - which for corn, is significant.  I suspect it's considerably more significant for beets, but I've looked for about an hour now and nobody's fessin' up to how much water it does take. This likely means it's a boat-load! 

I guess one could argue that even if beets take twice as much irrigation water as corn, the studies report you only need one-half the acres of beets for the same amount of ethanol produced from corn.  This could be good, right?  At least no worse!  But in the business world I'd be very surprised if the ethanol production (economic returns) won't be maximized if the land and water are available.  Besides, these guys are talking about pretty significant new acreages of beet production.  My guess is that in North Dakota water conservation is not very prominent on the radar screens of those promoting ethanol production from beets.   And this is fine - if you've got the land and water.  But, if water conservation is important, or necessary, to you, looks like it'll have to happen some other way if you jump on the beet ethanol wagon.

New Ogallala Study Starting Up

A four-year, $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation has been provided to Kansas University and $1.2 million to Michigan State University to co-study and clarify the future prospects of the Ogallala (links are press releases by both schools on this study).

It is no secret that total pumping from the aquifer many times exceeds recharge - even though these imbalances vary quite a bit from area to area within all of the states.  Irrigation is the support for one of the most abundant agricultural zones in the world, producing alfalfa, corn, sorghum, soybean, cotton, sunflowers and wheat, in addition to supplying water for numerous, and in some cases, very large feedlots.

The study is designed to look at not only the hydrologic aspects of the aquifer, but also economic and environmental factors.  A number of short and long-term scenarios from hydrological and socioeconomic perspectives will be explored hoping to answer questions about what the effect climate change and land-use changes might also have on the aquifer.  And even how the water users themselves may respond to changes in technology, economics the climate and declining water levels.

Kind of sounds like a repeat (but on a much larger scale) of the hydrologic and economic modeling we're already doing for our portion of the aquifer, but which is currently stalled due to funding issues.  I wish them luck and will be interested in their results.

Thomas County, KS Index Well

TH Cty Index Well

The Edwards Aquifer Authority posts daily the water levels from 2 index wells they monitor, and 2 discharge rates from important springs in the district.  I enjoy these daily posts which show very short term trends that are important to the region.  These are posted on Twitter every morning for the previous day.  You can follow them, too, at:  Edwards Aquifer Authority Twitter Acct



Based on their lead, I've added a link to our index well on our web page here:

TH Cty Index Well Link  This is an interactive page that returns a graph and the raw data for any date range you want to look at.  The readings are taken every two hours, and began in June, 2008.  This page contains all 3 Kansas index wells - you'll find the Thomas County well information and data at the very bottom.

Below is the graph of water level elevations (in feet above sea level) for this well since it began operation.  (click on it to enlarge)  This index well is NOT an active irrigation well, and is located about 1/2 mile to 1 mile from all irrigation wells in the area.  It shows the classic curve of declining water levels in the Spring and Summer as irrigation is going on, and water level recovery back to the time the declines start again for the next irrigation season.  For this well, highest recovery levels are:  2975.7' in Mar 2008; 2975.1' in May 2009; 2976.2' in Apr 2010; and 2975.1' in Mar 2011.  This data shows a -.6' change (decline) from 2008 to 2009; a +1.1' (increase) from 2009 to 2010; and a -1.1' (decline) from 2010 to 2011 (the full -1.1 decline is not shown on graph , but has been measured since).  Bottom line from this data - this well has declined -.6' over the past 3 years.

The yellow dots are the actual measured water levels taken in early January each year which become the official water level measurements.  From this official data, this well changed -1.4' from 2008 to 2009; + 1.3' from 2009 to 2010; and - .75' from 2010 to 2011.  The directions are all consistent, but the sizes of the changes are different.

The regional irrigation wells, of which there are about 6, cumulatively affect the water levels at this point about 5-6 feet every year.  Of course, the pumping levels are lower yet as you get closer to the individual pumping wells.  In some cases, Mid-August pumping levels can be 50 - 70 feet lower than the static water levels of these heavily pumping irrigation wells.  You can also see that the water level impacts are much quicker than the recovery impacts.  This has to do with aquifer parameters, which affect pumping cones of depression, which influence water levels.

It is interesting that the lowest pumping levels over the past 3 years are increasing slightly, which may or may not mean good news, while the recovery levels (highest annual points) bounce around a bit.  It's important to understand that these highs represent actual physical recovery levels and not theoretical recovery levels.  We're finding that the recovery periods would continue past the start of the next irrigation season if allowed to do so, meaning the theoretical high points are being influenced by pumping.  The question is, to what degree?  Do we need to consider full recovery levels from year to year in order to more definitively describe what the water table is doing?  We're working a bit on projecting full recovery levels, but it's a lot of assumptions and statistics at this point in time.

What I like about this arrangement is that longer term trends can easily be looked at - as opposed to just today's data, yesterdays levels, and a comparison to the monthly average.  Oh, the hourly and daily variations are due to changing barometric pressures.  A low pressure regime will cause the water table to rise a few inches, while high pressure lowers the level a like amount.  We can see a 5-6 inch rise or decline over a days time due to pressure alone.  The real serious water level data in Kansas is further adjusted for barometric influences as well - where the regional pressures have been recorded and can be correlated.  I only wish we had a bunch more of these index wells logged.

 

 

 

 

 

GMDA Enters Lawsuit

The Groundwater Management Districts Association (GMDA) has filed an Amicus brief to enter the on-going lawsuit between the Central Platte NRD and FSA.  The case began in 2007 when the YMD Joint Water Management District in Mississippi requested certain information from FSA via FOIA.  They wanted land ownership records for re-permitting issues and recognized that the FSA records, if provided, would save them considerable time, manpower and money because FSA already had all the data in electronic form.  YMD otherwise would have to do extensive courthouse visits (17 Counties) to amass the data.  YMD informed FSA that they too were a government entity, and agreed to maintain FSA privacy standards.  FSA denied their request.  YMD appealed the decision and sought a formal appeal hearing.  Following this hearing, FSA vacated the original FOIA denial and asked Mississippi FSA to consider the request again - presumably favorably.  However, in the meantime, FSA inserted language in the developing 2008 Farm Bill which strengthened the privacy criteria and closed the door again on YMD's request.

Then the Central Platte NRD requested the same information to undertake a very involved irrigation well and irrigated land registration process.  Unlike YMD, the CPNRD had just spent 2 years and $250,000 canvassing the courthouses and amassing the database they needed, which FSA already had. They also claimed to be a goverment entity and to protect the privacy of the data.  They too, were denied.

In 2009, GMDA passed a Resoultion which was submitted to FSA, which was never even acknowledged. (click here to view) The resolution was adopted unanimously by the association.

Seems a shame that state and local goverment entities cannot access and use federal data that is so easily available.  None of the data requested was sensitive - in terms of payments provided or other financial or operational items - it was all data that is publicly available from various, individual county sources, but not pulled together and organized like the FSA dataset.  So much for a more transparent federal government.

For more information on the suit, contact the Central Platte NRD or the YMD District.  

Always Bothered Me

I ran across the following in a newsletter today:  "State law prohibits the occurrence of uncontrolled irrigation runoff...It is illegal to operate an irrigation system that contributes to wasting groundwater."  The article goes on to say that the management entity has budgeted cost-share funds for the installation of irrigation reuse pits, and that additional state and federal cost-share funds are also available.  I have to ask:  Why is anyone using tax payers money to cost share on fixing an illegal activity?  Especially one that will save the irrigator lots of money.

We ran across the same situation in Kansas years ago regarding the plugging of abandoned wells - also illegal - and also cost-shared by the state and some local entities.  GMD 4 chose to regulate the plugging of these wells over enticing the owners with cost-share funds.  We got 2,000 wells (after an inventory) plugged for an average GMD4 cost of about $30.00 per well.  The cost share programs were getting wells plugged for about $200.00 per well.  Our effort got all the located wells plugged in our district.  Theirs got only 75 or so plugged from conscientious landowners over the rest of the entire state.  Like patching holes in the roof - what good does it do to fix 5% of the holes?

Our program educated and involved the well drillers so that very few new abandoned wells were coming into the system. Theirs was business as usual at the close of the program with landowners walking away from wells at the same pace as before.  The problem would simply return over time.

The regulatory approach was not always easy, but it was remarkably efficient and effective.  I always thought the public footing the bill for this work would take us to task quicker if we chose to use an inefficient and/or ineffective approach to solve the problem. This is actually a bigger waste of public funds in my opinion.  Our board agreed with me and went the regulatory path. Anyway, good luck with cost-sharing these solutions.