Rod, does Kansas allow irrigation for farmers?
Yes on the irrigation.
I am not an expert on our complex water rules - so I am sure I will mis-state some facts in my explanation. (Snipe knows the rules since he had to jump through many hoops but managed to get some extra water for his operations.)
I believe most of the water rights were developed on a variation of "first come, first served" basis. If you had a great aquifer under your farm, you could physically pull as much water as your crops could use. This amount was reported to the state for several years, and then you eventually "perfected" a water right for roughly that amount.
However, in the 1970s (?) we realized that the water levels in the aquifers were going down and the recharge rate was much less than the water usage rates.
I inquired about a water well on our farm for supplementing our ponds. The answer was a firm no! Our area is oversubscribed for water appropriations. I believe if the conditions get bad enough, the state can shut down some of the more recently granted water appropriations to allow the most "senior" rights to draw their full allocations.
We do have good exceptions though. I can drill a well at my farm for "household" use. The allocation is enough for a family, plus watering some trees and/or lawn and raising some stock animals. However, NOT enough for a commercial hog operation, or filling ponds, etc.
I am sure it is not the optimal system, but the law on matters like that always grows organically.
I think most of the western 2/3rds of the state is in a similar circumstance where the aquifer is drawing down. However, the Ogallala Aquifer is a geologic marvel. It extends from South Dakota to west Texas. There are places in Kansas where it is 500' thick. There are places in Nebraska where it is over 1,000' thick. The largest available well pumps could not even draw down the water levels an inch (in the short term) in places like that. I suspect the farmers thought that they had a limitless supply!
The eastern third of Kansas gets significantly more rain, and has many areas with rock outcrops rather than deep prairie soils. (snrub farmed in eastern Kansas and has pictures of his place in some of his posts. However, I suspect it is not far to bedrock beneath his fields.) There are even places with some moderate sandstone outcrops that look very similar to Anthropic's property - except the forest is Post Oaks instead of pines! We do have a few areas of pine forest that look like parts of East Texas, but the subsoils have to be exactly right.
