Saving Wichita's water supply

Last Update: 7/03 5:42 pm

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WICHITA, Kansas – Every living organism on the planet depends on water to survive. As our cities grow so does our demand and the problem for Wichita is its supply isn’t growing at the same rate.

Most of the water we use in the city comes from the Cheney Reservoir – most, but not all. About 40 percent of what comes out of our taps every day comes from a huge underground reservoir. It’s called the Equus Beds Aquifer and it stretches from McPherson and Reno County all the way to Sedgwick County. It holds billions of gallons of fresh water.

“There is probably an average of 20 to 30 million gallons of water a day that comes out of this area for Wichita,” said Angela Cato with the City of Wichita.

And that’s just what the city is using. It doesn’t count all the private wells and agricultural users that are also pumping water out of the aquifer. The problem is the water is being drained faster than it is being replaced and the levels are dropping.

“Your talking about areas of 40 feet, and considering what is still going to be withdrawn out of it for drinking water, there is just no time,” said Cato. “The aquifer was going to be lost if there wasn't something done to save it.”

Raising the stakes even more; as fresh water levels drop, it opens a path for surrounding saltwater to work its way in.

“If we get saltwater in the aquifer, it becomes hard to use it as a drinking water source and the farmers can't irrigate, it's not productive for crops,” said Richard Robinson with Wichita Water Resources.

Now, the race is on to save the Equus Beds. For the last several years the City of Wichita has been pumping excess water out of the Little Arkansas River, cleaning it and putting it back into the aquifer.

Since the re-charging project started back in 2007, the City of Wichita has re-injected 780 Million gallons of water back into the aquifer. To give an idea of how much water that is, KSN went to Edgemoor Park, where one of the largest public swimming pools in the city is. Give or take a splash or two, it holds 370,000 gallons of water. It would take 2,080 of the pools to equal how much water has been replaced into the aquifer.

Similar aquifer re-charging projects have been successful in other parts of the country. City planners say taking action now will provide a safe and reliable source of water for the future.

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