Texas District Initiates On-line Meter Reporting

The High Plains Underground Water Conservation District No. 1 (HPWD) developed an on-line reporting system for meter readings which their new regulations now require annually.  Actually, the district requires either a meter reading or an "alternative measuring method reading" each year between December 15 and January 15 of the following year.  It's a pretty cool system whereby each well owner creates his or her own user account and then logs into that account to post their year-ending reading.  The previous year's ending reading serves as the current year's starting number.

There are provisions to customize the accounts in a number of ways - you can associate others to your account, like an operator, co-owner, etc., or associate other well locations, or can associate a meter installer who will be able to update your account by adding a meter, but won't be able to post meter readings. 

One is also able to easily add property and/or meter data to their account by two methods - either by name or by map locations using lat/long coordinates.  I'm sure there'll be some glitches, but kudos to the district for undertaking this important task.  Visit the HPWD website for more information.

Kansas has been working on and off for about 4 years now to create an on-line water use reporting system for its water right owners.  It is considerably more complex of an undertaking than simply capturing meter readings, but, nevertheless just as convenient for the regulated public.  We may have something for the 2013 water use reports due in early 2014 - but then again, it may take several more years - who knows.  The real angst I have is that Texas got a good idea done before we did it here in Kansas!!  Something's got to be done about that!!

Reporting Water Use in Kansas

Water right reporting in Kansas has been attended to quite a bit by all state and local groups.  Of course, the division of water resources administers the effort, but many others help - including the local GMD's, the Kansas Water Office and the Kansas Geological Survey.  The annual reporting system is really good, but it's not perfect.

One of the issues is reporting your maximum amount and rate regardless of what you pumped.  Unfortunately there have been too many advantages in the past for doing this.  First, the water right's certification process is based on the maximum water use reported in the period of record, and it uses these reports to establish the final certificate amount.  It's not hard to see what an advantage high reported water use would provide in this process.  However, any such advantage ceases to exist after the water right has been certified.  Unfortunately, most water users hear the high pumpage certification mantra and then forget all the rest.  Requiring meters and the reporting of start and ending meter readings puts a halt to this practice.

Equally as problematic are the various incentive programs for setting aside or voluntarily forfeiting water rights - they almost always base the payment on historical reported water use.  The more water you have been using, the more acrefeet of water you are eligible to retire, the better the water right looks to those wanting it retired, and the higher your payment is.  Again, most water users just retain the idea that high reported water use is good, and forget that the numbers being used are always in the past.  Of course, meters and reporting metered values solves this problem as well - at least for the time the meter record is available.  For the guy that has always reported excessively, he still wins.

However, the notion that high reporting is good still lingers regardless of the attempts to dispell it.  Just glad we metered all wells in GMD 4 and don't have to worry a whole lot about this issue any more.  Of course, the state has found a few creative types who have not pumped their full annual quantity and are inflating their ending meter readings to give them a cushion next year if they should need it - a very innocent form of private water banking in the eyes of the water users doing it no doubt.

The sad thing about all of this is how the water modeling being done is being affected.  Bottom line is that inaccurate water use reports screw up much more than most think.

God Forbid California Should Look Elsewhere for Direction

Sometimes I just don't get it.  An inordinately large amount of the water news over the past several months has been on the California situation.  A lot of the criticism has been over the lack of water monitoring and measurement (metering) especially groundwater by agriculture - the group that uses most of the state's water.  It's like no one else in the world has any water problems quite as large, or complex and pressing, or, has any solutions that California would remotely be interested in.

For the Californians in the audience, I'd like to offer that Kansas has been monitoring water use since the mid 1970s, took significant strides to improve that monitoring in the late 1980s, and began metering all non-domestic wells in selected areas in the late 1990s.  Today, Kansas has some of the best (most complete and accurate) water use reporting - especially for irrigation and municipal water use - in the country.  Review some of these reports at your leisure KWO Water Use Reports and assess for yourself how useful this data might be for yourself.  And the data itself is also available to the public on a website maintained by the Kansas Geological Survey - WIMAS.  This data on water rights and reported water use is uploaded every day from the Division of Water Resources.  And finally, KGS also maintains the obervation well network on about 1,700 water level measurements taken each year in Kansas (KS Water Level Data).  And Kansas likely is not the only western state that has been monitoring its water resources and use.

Having been through most of Kansas' program development, I'll admit that it was not always that easy and wasn't particularly popular with the water users, but now that it's been done, most everyone recognizes the benefits and appreciates the fairness of it all.  The most common comment I get now is:  "Why didn't we do this 25 years ago?"  I guess it's none of my business what California chooses to do or not do, so I'll just sit back and watch as they continue to argue over what probably is the most important thing they could possibly do with regard to their water resource and its allocation, management and conservation.  Should eventually keep the water lawyers very busy, though.