How much water does this Kansas right actually use?
Type a county — Finney, Gray, Sedgwick — or a point number. 59,615 points of diversion, each with thirty-four years of reported use.
Working through a lease block or a portfolio? Pro access resolves a list of points, and the datasets are published with their prices — from USD 300 a month for the stream of changes.
The number that does not move
Reported use across Kansas peaked in 2000 at 6,374,054 acre-feet and bottomed in 1993 at 3,525,238 — a swing of about 40%. That is rainfall, not policy, and it means any two years picked from the table below can be made to tell almost any story.
What barely moves is the count of points reporting any use at all: 26,449 in 1990, 26,192 in 2023, and never outside a narrow band in between. The number of straws in the ground is steady; how hard they are pulled depends on the year.
Averaged by decade rather than picked by year: the last ten years run at 5,320,529 acre-feet against 4,984,804 for the first ten.
| Year | Acre-feet | Acres irrigated | Points reporting | vs average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 5,352,005 | 3,072,845 | 26,449 | +3% |
| 1991 | 5,433,882 | 3,113,924 | 26,889 | +4% |
| 1992 | 3,989,212 | 2,958,889 | 24,921 | -23% |
| 1993 | 3,525,238 | 2,852,221 | 23,540 | -32% |
| 1994 | 4,696,430 | 3,049,779 | 26,128 | -10% |
| 1995 | 4,418,233 | 3,034,234 | 25,755 | -15% |
| 1996 | 5,605,153 | 3,091,384 | 26,073 | +7% |
| 1997 | 5,493,787 | 3,160,348 | 26,354 | +5% |
| 1998 | 5,755,680 | 3,196,549 | 26,388 | +10% |
| 1999 | 5,578,425 | 3,219,416 | 26,510 | +7% |
| 2000 | 6,374,054 | 3,210,255 | 26,745 | +22% |
| 2001 | 5,617,732 | 3,171,589 | 26,776 | +8% |
| 2002 | 5,985,182 | 3,268,093 | 27,220 | +15% |
| 2003 | 5,319,435 | 3,151,822 | 27,151 | +2% |
| 2004 | 4,811,662 | 3,139,313 | 26,634 | -8% |
| 2005 | 4,580,074 | 3,126,779 | 26,654 | -12% |
| 2006 | 4,985,462 | 3,112,716 | 26,619 | -4% |
| 2007 | 4,703,046 | 3,080,449 | 26,235 | -10% |
| 2008 | 4,877,746 | 3,096,335 | 26,215 | -6% |
| 2009 | 4,772,103 | 3,075,959 | 26,135 | -8% |
| 2010 | 5,225,571 | 3,092,168 | 26,281 | +0% |
| 2011 | 6,168,180 | 3,127,563 | 26,680 | +18% |
| 2012 | 5,736,318 | 3,069,607 | 26,674 | +10% |
| 2013 | 5,083,268 | 3,171,419 | 26,518 | -3% |
| 2014 | 4,979,459 | 3,131,364 | 26,647 | -5% |
| 2015 | 4,768,277 | 3,125,738 | 26,394 | -9% |
| 2016 | 5,539,658 | 3,111,109 | 26,389 | +6% |
| 2017 | 5,468,202 | 3,155,015 | 26,500 | +5% |
| 2018 | 5,183,645 | 3,061,194 | 26,497 | -1% |
| 2019 | 4,714,914 | 3,082,211 | 25,631 | -10% |
| 2020 | 6,187,504 | 3,091,762 | 26,155 | +19% |
| 2021 | 5,793,607 | 3,144,084 | 26,343 | +11% |
| 2022 | 6,087,338 | 3,093,472 | 26,487 | +17% |
| 2023 | 4,482,689 | 3,308,579 | 26,192 | -14% |
Why anyone looks this up
Two obligations sit behind this file, and both have money attached.
The annual report. Under K.S.A. 82a-732, the owner of a water right — other than for domestic use — must file a water use report by 1 March each year. Miss it and the penalty is USD 250 per file number; miss 1 June and it becomes USD 1,000 and suspension of all water use until the report is in.
And non-use ends a right. K.S.A. 82a-718 terminates a water right after five successive years without beneficial use. Which is why somebody buying irrigated ground wants to see the series before they buy the land, not after. But a run of zeros here proves nothing — and that matters more than it sounds.
Where the water goes
| County | Acre-feet 2023 | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Douglas | 900,517 | 20.1% |
| Finney | 219,288 | 4.9% |
| Stevens | 207,511 | 4.6% |
| Seward | 159,496 | 3.6% |
| Meade | 154,452 | 3.4% |
| Gray | 151,760 | 3.4% |
| Haskell | 145,196 | 3.2% |
| Kearny | 143,771 | 3.2% |
| Edwards | 113,474 | 2.5% |
| Sedgwick | 108,891 | 2.4% |
| Grant | 104,222 | 2.3% |
| Wyandotte | 102,762 | 2.3% |
| Pratt | 99,716 | 2.2% |
| Ford | 96,916 | 2.2% |
| Stafford | 92,560 | 2.1% |
Groundwater, and the districts that manage it
51,474 of the 59,615 points draw groundwater — 86.3%. In western Kansas that means the High Plains aquifer, the formation people call the Ogallala, and five groundwater management districts exist to govern it.
| District | Points | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Outside any district | 25,058 | 42.0% |
| Southwest Kansas GMD 3 | 15,740 | 26.4% |
| Big Bend GMD 5 | 6,850 | 11.5% |
| Northwest Kansas GMD 4 | 4,377 | 7.3% |
| Equus Beds GMD 2 | 4,186 | 7.0% |
| Western Kansas GMD 1 | 3,404 | 5.7% |
⚠️ What this file cannot tell you
These are reported figures, not meter readings, and a median point reported 97 acre-feet in 2023. There are no blanks in the usage columns: a nil return, a point that did not yet exist, and a report never filed all read as 0 — and 33,423 points read 0 for 2023. What that does and does not mean.
All 73 counties · What the series shows · What a zero means · Districts · Year by year · How this site is built