Two weeks ago, District 4 Barton County Commissioner Tricia Schlessiger suggested the commission pen a letter showing solidarity with Stafford County residents embroiled in a dispute with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over water rights involving Quivira National Wildlife Refuge. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly beat them to the punch.
“It happened too fast,” she said, addressing the commission Tuesday morning following its agenda meeting. Kelly’s Sept. 8 letter urging USFWS Director Martha Williams to consider the water rights of all users followed a submission from 32 local officials pleading for an equitable solution to the controversy.
“We would have done this too,” said commission Chairman Shawn Hutchinson, District 3. “We just didn’t have time.”
What is the issue?
In a matter dating back to 2016, the service is seeking to evoke its senior water right to secure water for the Quivira. The FWS made its ask through the Kansas Department of Agriculture-Division of Water Resources.
However, state and local officials are concerned about the future of those in the Rattlesnake Creek Basin with rights junior to the refuge. They are worried about the implications for farmers and ranchers, as well as communities in the area.
They, along with Kelly, are after a solution that satisfies the needs of both the refuge and the local economy.
The governor’s letter
“As the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is a key partner in the conservation of Kansas’s natural resources and the health and vitality of the central Kansas’s region, I am writing to share my concern and the community’s concern for the economic effects that an immediate call for the Service’s senior water rights in the Rattlesnake Creek Basin would have on the surrounding community’s economic vitality,” Kelly wrote.
“In addition to being home to the Quivira National Wildlife Refuge, an important sanctuary for many migratory and resident species, central Kansas’s home to an essential and robust community of agriculture producers and associated rural businesses that constitute the largest industry and private sector employer throughout much of this region of the state,” the letter said.
Despite at times challenging conditions, the refuge and surrounding farms existed, “each serving as stewards of the surrounding land and water and providing habitat for local wildlife,” Kelly wrote.
But, an abrupt change in farming practices – which would be required by an immediate call for the service’s senior water rights – could devastate the entire region, she said. This includes municipalities, schools, residents and businesses not directly involved in the agricultural sector.
She commended the service for previous collaborations with the regional Big Bend Groundwater Management District 5 that provided a collaborative approach to increase stream flow in the Rattlesnake and address the impairment of water to the refuge. She urged continued cooperation.
“Sustained collaboration could be especially helpful in developing innovative solutions that provide for restoration of adequate stream flow in the basin ... and providing a path forward that avoids acute economic harm to local communities, without the Service losing any rights.
“Failure to reach a collaborative and gradual solution will create unnecessary economic hardships for local businesses and communities that will ripple across the state and region,” she said.
More background
Kelly’s letter was sparked by a request from Kansas U.S. Sens. Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall, and Congressmen Ron Estes and Tracey Mann. Their letter referenced a July 2020 memorandum of understanding between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Big Bend Groundwater Management District No. 5.
It was designed to both protect the Quivira and the neighboring farms and communities, they said.
“While we firmly support the Prior Appropriation Doctrine in Kansas, we ask that you continue to advocate for the MOA so that the Department of Agriculture can avoid the unnecessary trigger of such doctrine which would essentially cut off the agricultural economic engine in central Kansas in favor of a water right owned by the federal government,” the letter reads.
It is worth explaining how Kansas senior and junior water rights work.
Under the Prior Appropriation Doctrine set forth in state statute, those who have older, or more senior, water rights, are entitled to satisfy those rights before those who have rights more recent, or junior, to them.
In the case of the Rattle Snake Creek Basin, the USFWS’s rights are senior to most everyone else in the region.
“We have been working with FWS and stakeholders since 2016 to find a solution to FWS’s impairment complaint in its administration of the Quivira NWR,” the letter notes. “FWS and GMD5 have been operating under a MOA, signed in 2020, to set the parties on a path to finding a science-based, commonsense solution that would provide stability to those reliant on water from the Rattlesnake Creek.”
But, the federal lawmakers said without warning, the USFWS submitted a request to secure water to the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Water Resources on February 10, 2023. This requires the water office’s chief engineer to respond to the request.
Because of this, “it is critical that your administration works in an expeditious manner to help the parties come to a more amicable solution,” the congressional letter reads.
