Climate and energy

The League of Women Voters (LWV) has named global climate change as a priority issue for 2009. Therefore, LWV chapters around the country will be researching, discussing, and mobilizing their membership on this issue.

In this guest blog series, we’ve asked the Kansas League of Women Voters to weigh in with their thoughts. This series of interviews spotlights perspectives from various LWV chapters around the state of Kansas.

The following is an interview with Susan Stover, an environmental scientist and licensed geologist with the Kansas Water Office.  Susan is also a member of the LWV Topeka.

“I’m in the business of getting people to use less water,” says Stover.

Although her office is in Topeka, Stover’s focus is western Kansas. With KWO for 10 years, Stover manages the High Plains Unit that covers the western third of Kansas, which is over the Ogallala and lesser aquifers of the High Plains aquifer system. The KWO coordinates water activities of state agencies and develops the five-year Kansas Water Plan.

A member of the League of Women Voters of Topeka, Stover helped develop the LWV of Kansas 2009 water resources management position recommendation that the State of Kansas coordinate water planning with a comprehensive State Energy Plan which would include the full cost of water used in the production and transportation of energy.

Stover recently talked with Barbara Hayter of the LWV Manhattan about what she hears Kansans saying about water, energy and climate change.

Q. Hayter: What attitudes toward climate change do you most frequently encounter?

A. Stover: I work with two communities: the scientific community and irrigators and farmers. Although the majority of the scientists I work with accept that climate change is human induced, there are respected scientists that question the causes. However, all of them are working to incorporate greater understanding of the temperature changes, how it may impact us and what can be done to mitigate it. .

Irrigators and local ranchers focus on more immediate concerns. Farmers are pretty busy dealing with business, drought and what’s happening right now. Some farmers, however, do say that crops are maturing sooner than they used to, attributing the cause as likely to be short term weather trends as climate change.

If changes occur as predicted on some climate change models the temperature rises, particularly in SW Kansas, along with change in precipitation patterns to longer dry periods and more intense rainfalls will change agriculture significantly.

Q. Hayter: What are the challenges to bringing about a change in attitude?

A. Stover: It’s really difficult to implement wide spread change. The challenges are to identify the most effective courses of action and then to implement them.

Water in Kansas belongs to the citizens with water appropriation law giving the first in time to obtain water rights having first rights to use it.

In western Kansas water is being mined. In many areas, within 25 to 50 years the aquifers will not sustain the current rate of use. There are a certain number of farmers now who find their wells diminishing. If a more senior water right is impaired, junior water rights can be turned off. We’re probably going to see a lot of that in the next decade or two.

We have an incentive plan to retire water rights in key areas in order to guarantee water access to senior, or priority users and conserve the quantity of water available to the High Plains aquifer system. Conserving and extending the useable life of the High Plains aquifer gives the region more options in the future. Decline in the ground water level isn’t just a western Kansas concern; baseflow to streams and rivers comes from maintaining the ground water at a level that can contribute to the total flow. Loss of baseflow leads to less streamflow into central and eastern Kansas.

There is resistance to retiring water rights from some State Legislators who are concerned about the economic impact. Even for a voluntary program primarily supported with Federal funds, the legislature scaled the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) back to a fifth of what could have been retired. Their concern for the short-term economic hits (to rural communities) came before the long-term benefits. Farmers that enroll irrigated acres into CREP must transition the acres to a conservation planting (usually grass) for 15 years and permanently retire the associated water rights, in return for guaranteed state and federal payments. The payments, while a benefit to the farmer that enrolls, doesn’t contribute as much to the local economy as did the irrigated crop production.

Effectively all of the High Plains Aquifer is closed to new appropriations. In western Kansas over 90 percent of the water used is pumped from the aquifer and 94 percent of that is used for irrigation. If you want to move out there and open a new business you need to purchase water rights from people who already own them, generally from irrigators. Seniority stays with a water right when it is sold.

When water goes from irrigation to municipal or industrial use there is a consumptive use formula so no more water can be consumed by the new use than that actually used by the crop. Typically, we see irrigation water rights sold for higher value uses – such as municipalities, dairies, or ethanol plants. This helps bring some economic diversity to the region.

Q. Do you see attitudes changing?

A. Stover: Looking at the water footprint is an idea that is picking up interest. (www.waterfootprint.org) It’s the same as tracking the carbon footprint in that it looks at the water imbedded in products that we import and export. Western Kansas with its irrigated grain crops and cattle feed lots is a water exporter. Looking at the water footprint helps us to be aware that in 50 years much of the water won’t be there anymore.

There is the beginning of an awareness of the water implications of producing energy as building various plants in western Kansas are proposed. Most energy production takes water and bio fuels are no exception. Making a gallon of ethanol from corn takes three to four gallons of water plus the water to grow the corn, if irrigated corn is used. There are possibilities with cellulosic ethanol using crop residue, but the loss of nutrients and soil moisture also needs to be considered.

Organizations like the League of Women Voters and many others are forming coalitions to increase public awareness and calling for action to address climate change, related water, energy, and agriculture issues and more.

Q. Hayter: What gives you optimism about the future?

A. Stover: I think it’s faith in the Midwest viewpoint that gives me the most optimism. People in this part of the nation have a lot of common sense and sense of community. As problems are identified, and the more they are talked about, actions will be identified. As actions are identified they will be embraced. Fighting to made the changes sooner rather than later is the big challenge.

By Barbara Hayter and Jean Lee,
League of Women Voters Manhattan/Riley County