Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) for the Preservation
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available to address other problems. Further aspects of the proposed management
plan include:
• Extension of public water supplies to the rural areas and small communities,
which are presently ill-equipped to deal with the extensive non-point nitrate
contamination associated with irrigated agriculture.
• Waste stream management and segregation to enhance the quality and
recycling effectiveness of the treated municipal waste water.
• Selective use of desalination to maintain the overall quality of the public
water supplies as a long-term option.
Waste stream segregation and desalination are both practical because the
region already has deep waste injection wells, used for oil brine disposal without
contaminating surface resources. Although these are rather expensive options,
they can be applied as part of a large-scale management system because of the
potential for wide distribution of both costs and benefits. The region has a large
supply of marginal-quality water available; complete desalination would not be
required, as a relatively small proportion of high-quality water could be blended to
make a much larger volume of water complying with (for example) standards for
municipal use.
4 Summary and Conclusions
Regional water resources in south-central Kansas are currently characterized as
follows:
• Municipal water supplies are faced with combined problems of quality
deterioration, increasing demand, and extremely limited options for
additional supplies of good-quality water.
• Agricultural and environmental needs continue high, and present patterns of
use are probably not sustainable by the resources currently available.
• Enhancing surface flow and groundwater quality in the major salt source
region will address the underlying salinity problems on time scales of
decades, while local water table manipulation closer to the cities can
mitigate local problems on shorter time scales.
• Municipal wastewater is an unused resource in the area, and is available in
volumes that would make it effective for high-leverage applications like
brine replacement or local groundwater flow modification.
• Agricultural demands are highly seasonal and the surface relief of the region
is too low to provide good opportunities for surface storage of water. This
also serves to make aquifer recharge by treated wastewater an attractive
option for protection against salinity transport induced by transient water
table reduction due to irrigation pumping.
The IWRM approach proposed for south-central Kansas is based on the
postulate that all kinds and qualities of water resources in the region have their
appropriate niche for use by people, agriculture, and natural habitats. Budgets of
water and salt quantities help to match each kind of water with its appropriate
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available to address other problems. Further aspects of the proposed management
plan include:
• Extension of public water supplies to the rural areas and small communities,
which are presently ill-equipped to deal with the extensive non-point nitrate
contamination associated with irrigated agriculture.
• Waste stream management and segregation to enhance the quality and
recycling effectiveness of the treated municipal waste water.
• Selective use of desalination to maintain the overall quality of the public
water supplies as a long-term option.
Waste stream segregation and desalination are both practical because the
region already has deep waste injection wells, used for oil brine disposal without
contaminating surface resources. Although these are rather expensive options,
they can be applied as part of a large-scale management system because of the
potential for wide distribution of both costs and benefits. The region has a large
supply of marginal-quality water available; complete desalination would not be
required, as a relatively small proportion of high-quality water could be blended to
make a much larger volume of water complying with (for example) standards for
municipal use.
4 Summary and Conclusions
Regional water resources in south-central Kansas are currently characterized as
follows:
• Municipal water supplies are faced with combined problems of quality
deterioration, increasing demand, and extremely limited options for
additional supplies of good-quality water.
• Agricultural and environmental needs continue high, and present patterns of
use are probably not sustainable by the resources currently available.
• Enhancing surface flow and groundwater quality in the major salt source
region will address the underlying salinity problems on time scales of
decades, while local water table manipulation closer to the cities can
mitigate local problems on shorter time scales.
• Municipal wastewater is an unused resource in the area, and is available in
volumes that would make it effective for high-leverage applications like
brine replacement or local groundwater flow modification.
• Agricultural demands are highly seasonal and the surface relief of the region
is too low to provide good opportunities for surface storage of water. This
also serves to make aquifer recharge by treated wastewater an attractive
option for protection against salinity transport induced by transient water
table reduction due to irrigation pumping.
The IWRM approach proposed for south-central Kansas is based on the
postulate that all kinds and qualities of water resources in the region have their
appropriate niche for use by people, agriculture, and natural habitats. Budgets of
water and salt quantities help to match each kind of water with its appropriate