Fights over water in the West tend to follow a particular contour: Scarcity develops. A supply is located. Competition ensues. Government agencies become involved. Judges tend to get the last word.
The squabbles are all the same and every one is different.
Both the residents of parched Hays and Russell in northwest Kansas and those of thirsty Edwards County, some 60 miles south, covet the water beneath the sprawling R9 Ranch south of Kinsley, seeing it as a matter of survival in a coming era when the precious resource becomes even more scarce.
“This is hugely important to Hays and Russell,” said Hays City Manager Toby Dougherty. His city bought the nearly 7,000-acre ranch and its water rights in 1995 with long-term plans to pump that water northward. Russell eventually bought a 18% stake in the effort.
Now, three decades later, the $140-million-dollar project remains on hold, delayed by years of legal challenges. Over the past 11 years, Hays has spent $11 million in its battle, $8 million of that in legal fees. (See a timeline of events here.)
“All we got was opposition from day one,” he said. “We’re just frustrated.”
The cities’ application to change the use of the water from irrigation to municipal use met fierce resistance from opponents who argued that the subsequent transfer would deplete the local aquifer, increase pumping costs for neighboring farmers and damage the region’s agricultural economy.
But “our big concern is that it has got to be sustainable into the future,” said Richard Wenstrom, an Edwards County farmer whose land butts up against the ranch. He Is also the past president of the Water Protection Association of Central Kansas (Water PACK), a Great Bend-based organization of regional irrigators and farmers, and the main force fighting Hays’ plan.
“Water PACK is not against water transfers. Water PACK helped pass the water transfer act statute,” Wenstrom said. “We want it to be so that it’s sustainable, and that Hays can be a good neighbor.”
Against this backdrop, meanwhile, a multifront legal battle is taking place 200 miles to the east in Topeka. A Water PACK challenge to the state’s administrative grip on water is playing out in the Kansas Supreme Court and a bill sponsored by a Hays lawmaker to cement the state’s sole authority wound its way to passage in the Legislature and was signed by Gov. Laura Kelly March 28.
While the state’s highest court weighs the legality of the transfer — with a decision expected this summer — House Bill 2433 has stripped individual counties of the power to block state-approved water transfers.
A decision on the cities’ lawsuit against Edwards County’s 2024 zoning regulations that clouded the transfer is anticipated within the next 30-45 days.
Meanwhile, Edwards County officials feel let down.
“We are disappointed in the Legislature,” said Heather Strate, executive director of Edwards County Economic Development. “They voted to target one county and will impact all 105 counties. I don’t think they realize this is going to hurt all the counties in Kansas.”
The battleground is underground
The scruffy, rugged sand hills of the 11-square-mile R9 Ranch in southern Edwards County blend into the surrounding plains, but the true value of this pastureland lies underneath.
This value will only increase as the western reaches of the Sunflower State grow drier as an expected result of climate change and continued pumping in the High Plains aquifer, the massive underground deposits of water-bearing rock and sand that holds the region’s lifeblood.
The twists and turns in this saga began decades ago. In 1948, a report by the Kansas Geological Survey sketched out the marginal water resources in the Hays and Russell areas and future needs. In the mid-1980s, the city’s shallow water wells began to go dry, triggering a water supply crisis.
Stringent conservation measures were then adopted, and a renewed search for a new water supply culminated in the purchase of the R9 Ranch. In 2015, Hays and Russell initiated the process to convert use of the ranch’s water from irrigation to municipal use. In March 2019, the chief engineer approved the transfer application for 4,800 acre-feet up to a maximum of 6,700 acre-feet. (An acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons of water.)
The magnitude of the transfer galvanized opponents. “The Hays’ consultant’s drastic errors in overestimating recharge through the native grasses in their model run caused the chief engineer to overestimate the water that could be transferred,” Wenstrom said.
In February 2024, a judicial order approved the application. Edwards County responded in April 2024 by amending its zoning regulations to impose a local hurdle for the project to clear.
Dougherty characterized that action as an illegal attempt to override state authority, leading the cities to sue in October 2024, challenging the county’s zoning laws.
Not true, said Wenstrom.
“Any project that comes before the zoning board must be explained to the board. Since there had never been a water transfer project in Edwards County, the board developed new regulations to provide information about the transfer, not to ban the project,” he said.
Hays and Russell said the county was abusing its home rule authority. An exasperated Dougherty said: “We’ve gone above and beyond to be good neighbors. We’ve complied. We’ve more than complied.”
Also in 2024, Water PACK and Edwards County officials sued Kansas water officials, with the two communities joining as interveners on behalf of the state. That is the case now before the Supreme Court for a second time.
The first time the case appeared on the Supreme Court docket was the result of an appeal by Water PACK after the state prevailed at the district court level in 2023. The justices sent the case back for clarification on harm to surrounding water users. The District Court judge found evidence of harm, causing the state to then appeal.
In December 2025, the justices heard oral arguments regarding the conversion of these water rights. A ruling is expected in the first half of this year.
If the Supreme Court clears a path for Hays and Russell to proceed, the final word will rest with the state Water Transfer Panel, comprised of the chief engineer and the directors of the Kansas Water Office and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
A limited resource
No matter who notches a legal victory, Wenstrom thinks “eventually, Mother Nature will win.”
WaterPACK maintains the move threatens the sustainable and economical use of water within Groundwater Management District No. 5 that encompasses all or part of nine southcentral Kansas counties, including Edwards.
In Kansas, irrigation accounts for 83% to 90% of the state’s total water consumption. According to data from the Kansas Geological Survey, Kansas relies on groundwater for approximately 85% of its needs, a higher dependency than almost any other state in the country. Most of this is in the western two-thirds of the state, with water drawn from the High Plains aquifer.
Sustainability challenges are mounting as one-fourth of the aquifer has reached a minimum threshold, meaning it can no longer support large-scale irrigation, according to the geological survey. Projections indicate that nearly half of the aquifer in southwest Kansas could reach this critical level within 50 years.
Total annual water withdrawal in the state ranges from 1.6 trillion to 1.9 trillion gallons. Irrigation dominates usage, with municipal and public supply systems using about 10%, followed by industrial use at 3% and livestock or rural domestic needs at less than 1%. Public systems provide groundwater to roughly 1.2 million people, or about 51% of the state’s population.
Hays’ plan
“This project is truly existential to the survival of Hays and Russell,” Dougherty said. “Hays and Russell are in a water-deprived area. We are in a part of the state that doesn’t have a good water source to support its future. We have the duty to put this water to good use.”
The R9 Ranch’s 32 water rights allow the annual pumping of of approximately 8,000 acre-feet of water. Until about 10 years ago, nearly 5,000 acres were irrigated using center pivot units, Dougherty said. The land was then converted to natural grasses.
The city currently leases the pastureland to an area farmer who has grazed his cattle on the ranch for several years.
Moving the water will require building a 1-million-gallon storage tank and a well field on the ranch and pumping the water north through a 67-mile 24-inch pipeline to a new water tower near the Ellis County community of Schoenchen. Russell will build a separate pipeline to connect with its existing infrastructure.
The two cities are utilizing 1,500 acre feet each year but access to the ranch’s water would allow them to nearly triple that use. Of that, roughly 1,000 will go to Hays and 500 to Russell.
Hays is funding the multimillion-dollar endeavor via a half-cent sales tax dedicated to water conservation initiatives. Russell is utilizing user fees and a sales tax to cover its share.
After a local match, a Build Kansas Grant and an infusion of congressionally directed spending the cities are financing about $49 million with a low-interest Environmental Protection Agency loan over 30 years.
The project design is complete and most of the pipeline easements have been acquired, Dougherty said. The route, following county roadways through Edwards, Pawnee, Rush and Ellis counties, has been surveyed.
If the cities get the green light, the bidding process is expected to take four to five months. Construction is estimated to take two years. The water from the ranch will enter the cities’ water systems “on day one,” Dougherty said, adding it will comingle with the water already in the system.
Dougherty said the two municipalities have become statewide leaders in conservation yet even moderate droughts threaten their combined $2 billion annual economy.
Legislative action
State Rep. Barb Wasinger, a Hays Republican, who championed House Bill 2433, describes her town “as the only major city in Kansas without an adequate supply.” She defends the legislation, noting that Hays residents use, on average, 78 gallons of water per capita daily (this is lower than the state average of 109 gallons, according to the Kansas Water Office) yet the region faces a potential economic disaster without long-term security.
“Obviously, there are counties that think they have the final authority, not the state,” Wasinger, said. “The state has been the lone authority on water for over 80 years.”
Wasinger’s legislation was retroactive, meaning Edwards County’s restrictions are null and void. That left the Water PACK folks feeling like the legislative barrel was leveled directly at them.
“House Bill 2433 takes a shotgun to Edwards County,” said Pat Janssen, the current Water PACK board chairman whose farm is a neighbor to the ranch. “We’re not against the project; we’re just against the amount of water they want to take and the long-term ramifications.”
Water PACK projects that an annual drawdown of 2,200 acre-feet would sustain Hays and Russell, while not negatively impacting Edwards County, he said.
Rep. Brett Fairchild, a St. John Republican whose district is home to the headquarters of Groundwater Management District No. 5, and voting member of the district broke ranks with his party to oppose House Bill 2433 — one of only six House Republicans to vote against the legislation.
Fairchild, a farmer, expressed significant reservations about the potential for the bill to undermine local governance. He acknowledged Hays’ situation, but “a lot of people have a lot of concerns that that legislation goes beyond that specific situation.”
He further cautioned that the bill’s language might set a dangerous precedent for other local issues, such as the placement of data centers or solar farms.
“I don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea to be taking power away from the counties and be giving it to one person, to the chief engineer,” Fairchild said, adding that the person in that position “already has a lot of power under Kansas law.”
A matter of local control?
Water PACK, has contended that the water transfer proposal is based on flawed science, complicated by “administrative negligence” that could permanently damage the local aquifer.
Wenstrom argued that the water transfer figure of 4,800 acre-feet is inflated because the chief engineer neglected state-mandated site-specific investigations. Instead of conducting an independent analysis, the state relied exclusively on data from the city of Hays and applied generic procedures that ignored historical crop patterns.
He said Federal Farm Service Agency records rebut the state’s calculations, which erroneously assumed maximum irrigation occurred on every circle every year.
“The statute says you have to compare the consumptive use on irrigation versus the consumptive use of the new use,” Wenstrom said. “When the water is just put in a pipeline and sent to Hays, that’s 100% consumptive use, there’s no recharge at all.”
The dispute centers on the region’s hydrological integrity. Wenstrom contends that Edwards County’s sandy soil facilitates rapid aquifer recharge during irrigation, whereas the R9 Ranch’s native grasses require excess rainfall just to penetrate the root zone. Furthermore, he thinks the cities’ modeling inflated the aquifer’s saturated thickness by 56%, claiming 100 feet of water where only 44 feet exist.
Janssen fears that overpumping could lead to deteriorating water quality. He pointed out that the adjacent Arkansas River alluvium contains high levels of chloride and total dissolved solids, resulting in water so corrosive it can damage irrigation equipment.
“If they come in and they start to pump that aquifer off, as those water levels go down, the concentration of those contaminants goes up in the remaining water,” Janssen said. He warned of a snowball effect where both the quantity and quality of the water could decline simultaneously.
Strate, the county economic development director, thinks HB 2433 effectively granted the cities a win by default in their lawsuit, regardless of the merits of the county’s infrastructure concerns.
All the parties do seem to agree that while this case may be the first of its kind, it won’t be the last.
“We just want this done correctly,” Strate said. “We just want this process to be done lawfully, following the law, following the statutes to set the precedent for the rest of the projects that we all know are coming.”
While Dougherty understands the Edwards County position, “we are following every rule and regulation; in fact, we are going above and beyond the rules and regulations,” he said. Hays voluntarily reduced its water consumption “to be good stewards” of the resources.
“This transfer process is the first of its kind in Kansas. It has been a long process starting in 2015 with strong opinions and feelings on both sides,” said Chief Engineer Earl Lewis of the Kansas Division of Water Resources. “We are looking forward to the transfer panel finishing its work and making a decision later this year.”
This story previously appeared in the KLC Journal.
Copyright 2026 High Plains Public Radio
