Water districts keep flow pumping to rural residents
County growth strains supply
By CLEON RICKEL, Herald Senior Writer
|
|
Water. It's essential to all of us. But pollution and limited resources threaten our water supplies, and a confusing web of entities control who gets water and how much. The Herald's exclusive, six-part series examines important water issues facing Franklin County.
Both the public and public officials will tell you that water is the top issue facing the county in the future.
But outside of the city of Ottawa, which has its own water system and own sources of water, there's little that county and business officials can do about it.
Water as an issue largely is in the hands of the rural water districts that supply most of the rural areas, and in some cases, the cities in the county, Franklin County Commissioners Ed Taylor and Don Stottlemire said.
"There's not much that we as a commission can do about it," Taylor said. "We'll help them as much as we can."
Because of the underground geology of Franklin County, underground water is too sporadic or unreliable for water wells in most parts of the county -- and in some cases, there is no ground water easily available for wells.
That means the water must either be hauled and stored in cisterns or brought to farmsteads and rural homes through rural water district water lines.
Setting the districtsA map of the county shows a patchwork quilt that might have been stitched together by Timothy Leary, the doctor turned LSD drug disciple. Different colors, each depicting an in-county and out-of-county water district, plus a couple of water lines coming in from Osage County, are splashed across a map of the county.
There are seven rural water districts based in Franklin County. That doesn't include the eight other water districts based in other counties that serve Franklin County residents or the three pipelines that connect other counties' rural water districts to Wellsville, Pomona and Williamsburg.
And as more people move from the Kansas City area and elsewhere, the demand for rural water service is outstripping the supply, Stottlemire said. He is also a member of the Lake Region Conservation and Development group, which has been involved in several water conservation efforts.
"They all tell us they've reached their capacity," he said. "... Growth is happening so rapidly the water supply can't keep up."
In some districts, if water meters are available for purchase, there's a wait of months and years for them.
"There seems to be a pretty steady growth," Lyle Sundstrom, a member of the board of Rural Water District 1, said. Like other districts in the county, Sundstrom has seen some of the growth strains affect his district.
Is consolidation the answer?Water districts face many thorny issues including growing cities annexing areas served by the districts and by pressures to consolidate so they can better pay for new water lines or for new water treatment plants, Stottlemire said.
However, many rural water district boards often jealously guard their prerogatives and are reluctant to discuss consolidating with other districts, he said.
"It's understandable," Stottlemire said.
Most water districts were formed by small groups of farmers who wanted to get water to their homesteads and farms, he said. They filled out the paperwork, got the loans and supervised the laying of the their water lines, he said.
"They still regard the districts as theirs," he said.
When Franklin County was working on its comprehensive plan, which provides a guidebook for county planning and zoning efforts, Larry Walrod, county planning director, said he had problems getting information from some districts concerning their growth projections.
"And that's public information," Walrod said.
Walrod went to state officials and to a state organization that represents rural water districts to work up estimates concerning the county's future water needs.
And in many cases, consolidation isn't necessarily an answer to problems of growth, Dennis Schwartz, chairman of the Kansas Rural Water Association and manager of a Shawnee County rural water district, said.
"A lot of the federal people have pushed consolidation for years," Schwartz said. "They see consolidation as the solution to all of the small public water supply problems."
But a lot of times, consolidation doesn't work, Schwartz, whose district has been involved in successful consolidations, said.
Unless consolidation makes sense in a specific situation, Schwartz said the state rural water group is more inclined to encourage water districts to take part in cooperative efforts.
David Alderman, chairman of Rural Water District 7 -- which is probably the smallest district in the county -- said his board won't say no to another district that wants to consolidate.
Alderman said he's always worried that the demand for water will outstrip what his district can provide.
Most of the households in RWD 7 joined when the district was formed several years ago, he said.
They're farm families who know how to conserve water, Alderman said.
"We won't turn anyone away," Alderman said. "... But I'm terrified that we'll get some family moving in from Johnson County who will build a mansion and they'll want a meter, and they'll want to use water the way they always have."
Sprinklers and hot tubsConservative water use is a problem that many water districts in eastern Kansas face, Schwartz said.
It's not just the number of new people wanting service and stretching districts' resources, it's the amount of additional water those new people use, Schwartz said.
Many new people move to rural areas for the country life but want to maintain their citified use of water, he said.
As new people move into the country from the city, rural water districts are often finding their per-average water use has been climbing in recent years, he said.
In the past, when they did their budgets and water estimates, districts could figure a person would use an average of 6,200 gallons a water a year, he said.
"That was a pretty good figure," Schwartz said. "A pretty conservative number for budgeting."
However, water use in many districts has climbed to 6,800 to 7,000 gallons per person per year, he said.
"It's all those in-yard sprinkler systems and hot tubs," Schwartz said.
Bob Dunn, chairman of Rural Water District 2, said he hasn't been worried about his supply because the district buys its water from the city of Ottawa.
And the district has been diligent about making improvements in its water lines and equipment, he said.
Testing the systemKeeping up with growth isn't the only problem for rural water districts -- they'll face changing state and federal regulations, Ron Snethen, long-time Ottawa city water superintendent who recently retired, said.
Rural water districts have always maintained a regime of testing water in their lines, he said.
However, because of changes in federal regulations, the rural water districts will have to increase the number and sophistication of tests the water on their own, he said.
In more than 25 years of operation, the Ottawa water-treatment plant has never failed a water test and never failed to meet state and federal water safety standards, he said.
City water employees regularly perform a battery of tests on water throughout the treatment process, he said.
The city does its own tests and do others that are sent to independent laboratories, where the results go directly to the state as a check on the city's tests, he said.
"The rural water districts know we do all the testing and they figure that they don't need to do the testing themselves," Snethen said. "But they're going to have to start doing their own tests."
Because of those changing federal drinking water standards, rural water districts, especially smaller districts, will have no choice but to consolidate, Tom Sloan, state legislator, chairman of a Douglas County rural water district and member of the Kansas Water Authority, said.
Water districts will find it harder to meet those standards, especially if they have to build new water treatment plants to meet growth in demand, he said.
Several districts are working on joint water plant proposals at Hillsdale and Melvern lakes, he said.
Sloan's Douglas County Rural Water District 1 buys all of its water from the city of Lawrence.
"We had to close our water treatment plant," Sloan said.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
