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Kansas’ drought emergency order to remain in place as calendar flips to 2023
By Tim Carpenter
TOPEKA — The state of Kansas will enter the new year adhering to the October drought declaration issued by Gov. Laura Kelly covering all 105 counties.
Kelly’s order was based on a drought map that placed 67 counties on emergency status, assigned 11 counties to warning status and left 27 counties on watch status. Her action was in response to severe drought associated with a dry spring, hot summer and anticipated above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation throughout Kansas into December.
Connie Owen, director of the Kansas Water Office and chairwoman of the governor’s disaster response team, said conditions hadn’t changed sufficiently to warrant modification of the executive order issued Oct. 6.
“The Kansas Water Office continually watches the U.S. Drought Monitor and other scientific sources to determine when modifications of the current drought declaration may be appropriate,” Owen said.
The National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska reported drought conditions in the past four weeks had worsened in portions of northwest and western Kansas and improved in eastern Kansas along the border with Missouri. The U.S. Drought Monitor showed a broad swath of southern Kansas to be in “exceptional” drought as of Dec. 27.
Kelly said she would make water policy a top priority in her second term as governor and would not allow policy decisions about conservation to be kicked further down the road.
In mid-December, the Kansas Water Authority voted to recommend to the governor and 2023 Legislature that Kansas abandon a philosophy of “planned depletion” of the Ogallala Aquifer. The massive underground water reservoir has propelled irrigation of crops for three-quarters of a century.
Drought was significant enough in Kansas that 85 counties became eligible for the assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s livestock forage program. The declaration provided access to millions of dollars in cash assistance to ranchers in severe, extreme or exceptional drought.
The Kansas Farm Service Agency processed 7,700 applications for relief totaling more than $45 million by the end of October. The same program paid out $1 million in the previous fiscal year ending in October 2021 when drought was generally confined to northwest Kansas.
Image: The Kansas River near Lawrence runs low. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)
The Kansas Reflector is part of the States Newsroom, a network of similar news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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