David Condos
ReporterDavid Condos is High Plains Public Radio's western Kansas correspondent. Based in Hays, he reports on issues that shape rural communities across the Great Plains — from water and climate change to agriculture and immigration. His coverage of western Kansas has earned him several prestigious awards, including a National Edward R. Murrow award, two national Public Media Journalists Association awards and three regional Edward R. Murrow awards.
His work reaches audiences across Kansas through the Kansas News Service, a statewide collaboration of public radio stations. The stories he’s reported from western Kansas have also aired nationally on NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Here & Now and have been published in newspapers nationwide.
After growing up in Nebraska, Colorado and Illinois, Condos graduated from Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.
You can email him at dcondos@hppr.org and follow him on Twitter @davidcondos.
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Farmers in the Walnut Creek basin have faced strict restrictions on how much they can water their crops since the early 1990s. Those limits have pushed them to change their methods and their mindsets. -
Record-setting lack of rain in 2022 transformed parts of western Kansas into a temporary desert. And it'll take a while for the region's fields, towns and mindsets to recover. -
Decades of large scale crop irrigation now means big water problems in drought-stricken areas like western Kansas.
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A new study from Kansas State University researchers is the first to measure how a changing climate is hurting wheat production in the Great Plains. And it points to a future with more extreme heat, drought and wind. -
After decades of irrigation, the aquifer that makes life possible in dry western Kansas is reaching a critical point. Several counties have already lost more than half of their underground water. But a new plan could save more of what’s left. -
It’s been one year since drought-fueled wildfires tore across western and central Kansas. For the ranchers who lost so much, the rebuilding process is far from over. -
For the first time, the state board voted Wednesday to say that Kansas shouldn’t pump the Ogallala aquifer dry to support crop irrigation. The underground water source has seen dramatic declines in recent decades. -
This historically dry, hot year is wreaking havoc across the US. In the Great Plains, widespread drought has dried up water supplies, decimated crop harvests, and left cattle with no grass to eat.
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Think of this year’s drought as a sort of dress rehearsal to consider the drier, hotter future that scientists predict climate change has in store. Long-lasting droughts could alter the way we live. -
From deadly wildfires to choking dust storms to decimated crop harvests, this year’s drought has left its mark across the country. For the hardest hit areas, such as the Great Plains, recovering from the far-reaching impacts of this historically dry year won’t be easy.
