Water use in Kingman County

599 points of diversion — 1.0% of the Kansas file — reporting 19,618 acre-feet in 2023.

What the series actually shows — Kingman County

Reported use here peaked in 1991 at 27,975 acre-feet and bottomed in 2008 at 14,553. That swing is rainfall, not policy: a wet year needs less pumping than a dry one, and any two years picked from this table can be made to say almost anything.

Comparing decades instead: the last ten years average 19,659 acre-feet a year against 21,284 in the first ten — lower. And the number of points reporting any use moved from 197 to 220: the count of straws in the ground barely changes, whatever the year does to the volume.

Where the water comes from

Which management district

⚠️ What a zero here does not mean

379 of the 599 points in Kingman County report 0 acre-feet for 2023, and 480 show five or more successive years at 0 in this file.

A 0 in this file is not a finding. There are no blanks in the usage columns — every point carries a number for every year — so a nil return, a point that did not yet exist, and a report never filed all read the same. Kansas fines non-filing (USD 250 per file, USD 1,000 and suspension after 1 June), which is exactly why a missing report looks like a quiet year.

Kansas does terminate a water right after five successive years without beneficial use — K.S.A. 82a-718 — but only without due and sufficient cause, and only after a hearing before the chief engineer with 30 days’ notice. Four causes are recognised in K.A.R. 5-7-1, including adequate rainfall and water being unavailable at the source, and enrolment in the water rights conservation programme counts as one. A run of zeros here is a reason to check, never a conclusion.

Buying or defending irrigated ground in Kingman County?

599 points of diversion sit in Kingman County, reporting 19,618 acre-feet in 2023. What a right is actually worth turns on how much it has been used and on whether it can be defended — questions this site cannot answer for a particular file. Tell us where and we pass the request to Kansas water lawyers and consultants.

We recommend nobody and we are nobody's agent. We have no arrangement with any firm today — we are collecting these requests in order to go and find them. What we do with this.

The points, largest first

Counties with a comparable file

• Washington 663
• Clay 654
• Phillips 637
• Pottawatomie 636
• Wallace 621
• Morton 601
• Shawnee 601
• Rush 558
• Gove 554
• Kiowa 554
• Saline 543
• Hamilton 525
• Ellis 500

Neighbours by the size of their file, not a ranking: the list slides with the county, so each of the 73 county pages is reachable from the others. All of them.