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NEWS / THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
Maintenance mumbles
Cars parked by the West side of McColium were towed because of scheduled maintenance on the air conditioning and heating units. Notifications were posted Monday to reserve approximately 41 spots in the lot for Wednesday morning.
NATIONAL
Roberts denies destroying tapes
TOPEKA — A CIA spokesman is backing away from a 2003 internal memo that suggests Sen. Pat Roberts approved of the destruction of terrorist interrogation tapes.
The memo was released by the Department of Justice on Monday in litigation over a Freedom of Information request filed by Judicial Watch.
According to the Feb. 4, 2003, memo, Roberts was briefed by CIA officials about the interrogation of two detainees suspected
of terrorist activities against the U.S.
Roberts was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The existence of the video tapes was disclosed during the briefing. The CIA was concerned about them being leaked and the safety of the interrogators.
CIA spokesman George Little said Wednesday the account was never meant to be exhaustive.
The memo states that Roberts "listened carefully and gave his assent" to destroying the tapes. Roberts denies it.
Associated Press
STATE
Decrease in water raises problems
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
BY BRENNA LONG blong@kansan.com
Brett Wedel, a geologist at the Kansas Geological Survey, lowers a steel rope down into the well to record the water level in January east of Liberal. The Kansas Geological Survey travels west every January, weather permitting, to record water levels.
A source for Kyle Ross and his family's livelihood is drying up.
Ross, a freshman from Meade, lives on a farm that uses irrigation. It requires thousands of gallons of water a year to support crops.
But these days in southern Meade County, located about five hours southwest of Lawrence, the Ross farm is restricted by declining water levels. Old sprinklers stand in fields with no chance of spreading water over the crops. Streams, creeks and ponds slowly turn to dust, revealing the lack of water available.
As the water levels drop, these sights will become more common. Since 1996, the water levels in southwest Kansas have declined, except for a 1.2-inch increase in 1998, said Brownie Wilson, Geographic Info System and support services manager at Kansas Geological Survey.
Irrigation started in the 1950s and '60s, and with the ability to obtain and use more water, large-scale production soaked up the water in the underground Ogallala aquifer. Increased water usage allowed Kansas' agriculture industry to make millions. A study from the Kansas Geological Survey
reported that the use of irrigation turned a profit of $188 million for southwest Kansas in 2001.
to control water usage in various parts of the state, leaving family farms with even less water to irrigate their crops.
"E ve n though we may not see it on this side, agriculture is what
The Kansas Department of Agriculture issues water restrictions that apply to everyone in
"Even though we may not see it on this side, agriculture is what makes this state go round."
BROWNIE WILSON Support services manager at KGS
makes this state go round." Wilson said. "Having an irrigation well, especially in southwest Kansas, is like having a gold mine."
However, ground water is a limited resource. To monitor and preserve the water in the aquifer, the state has issued regulations
the state, but in parts of Kansas, such as where Ross lives, more regulations are added. Examples include the spacing of wells on proper ty, water permits and property rights, said Lane Letourneau,
program manager of the Water Appropriation Program at the Kansas Department of Agriculture.
The amount of water the Ross family can pump depends on the level of the aquifer and how much
water other people are using. The amount of water that is allowed to be used depends on the water levels for that day which are calculated for each county.
"We can't irrigate all our ground because of the regulations," Ross said. "We would probably grow different crops than we have now if we could irrigate all our land."
Right now, Ross said his family grows crops that don't demand as much water, such as wheat and milo, instead of corn. Ross' family is allowed to use only a certain amount of water or to pull water from certain wells.
To deal with the diminishing water levels and water restrictions, crops are rotated to keep the land fertile. The Ross family owns more than 1,000 acres, and Ross estimated that less than 25 percent of his family's land is irrigated.
The depletion facts come from teams like the one from the Kansas Geological Survey, located
on West Campus. Teams go out to measure the wells in January, when the least amount of irrigation takes place. Wells averaged water level drops of 2 to 5 feet, but drops as low as 10 feet occurred in some areas of southwest Kansas this year, said Wilson.
Though the water levels are visibly receding, the Kansas Division of Water Resources records the water movements every year so the exact amount of the decrease is known. So far, results have shown decreasing water levels throughout the state, except for a surprising increase in northwest Kansas, Wilson said.
Brett Wedel, a geologist at the Kansas Geological Survey, attributed the increase in the water levels to increased rainfall this past spring and summer.
With eight trucks full of software, GPS units and 500 feet of steel tape, the team trekked 1,500 miles round-trip to gather the water measurements. The group from Lawrence started measuring in the Colby area and moved on to St. Francis, Sharon Spring, Syracuse, Hugoton and Dodge City.