Water Resources

The Western Kansas Groundwater Management District No. 1 lies in west-central Kansas and includes a portion of five counties. Those counties are Wallace, Greeley, Wichita, Scott and Lane.  Within these counties we have approximately 1,118,200 acres included in the District. There are 2,805 permitted groundwater wells within the district pumping Ogallala water. The average annual usage has been approximately 300,000 acre-feet per year. For the past year our groundwater decline has averaged approximately one foot. Based on the amount of water in storage as well as the annual recharge, without any intervention, there is approximately 20 years of pumping left.