A years-long water rights dispute between Quivira National Wildlife Refuge near Stafford and the irrigated agricultural producers of Big Bend Groundwater Management District 5 has reached at least a détente if not a permanent resolution.

The two parties began negotiations in November of 2019, met several times through January and transitioned to weekly conference calls when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. On July 24, the GMD 5 board and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the Quivira refuge, approved a memo of agreement on a proposed resolution that was formally signed on July 25.

GMD 5 manager Orrin Feril says the resolution is multiphased. In the first phase, which will last five years, GMD 5 is required to, in all haste, pursue augmentation of the streamflow of Rattlesnake Creek into Quivira NWR. To accomplish that, the district will design and construct a well field to produce between 15 and 18 cubic feet per second of flow for use of the refuge.

In the following years, phase two would require designing a program for water rights purchases and retirement, particularly targeting the sensitive areas along Rattlesnake Creek upstream from the refuge.

Voluntary retirements

“We’ll be looking at retiring the right, not piping the water out but actually terminating the right,” Feril says. “It would be a voluntary retirement with the water rights holder presenting the district with their offer to participate in the program.”

The requirement would be to conserve 2,500 additional acre feet of water through the combination of the programs.

If augmentation and voluntary retirement prove unsuccessful, the district will pursue a mandatory removal of end guns from pivots.

“That’s been done in a lot of other areas already,” Feril says. “There are still quite a number of end guns in use in this part of the state.”

An additional water conservation and quality effort is taking place in the region that could also help with the refuge’s water supply. The Kansas Forestry Service and The Nature Conservancy have an ongoing tree removal program for salt cedar and Russian Olive trees that have become an invasive species in the whole Rattlesnake Creek sub-basin.

“Those are water-loving trees and are a real problem,” Feril says. “They add a lot of salt to the soil and even though cattle and other wildlife like to forage and bed down in those groves, it would not harm them for those trees to be removed. And removing them throughout the alluvium and upstream on Rattlesnake Creek would definitely have an impact on the level of the water in the creek.”

Feril says the water level in the aquifer has been steady for the most part with a slight decline of maybe 6 inches to a foot across the counties that make up the district: Barton, Edwards, Kiowa, Reno, Rice, Pratt, Pawnee and Stafford.

District is optimistic of success

Feril says he is very optimistic that the agreement will lead to a resolution of the impairment claim, an issue that has caused a rift between the refuge and the local farmers who see the impairment as a threat to the economic stability of the whole district.

“I think we have a path forward that we can all hang our hat on, one that is based on science and common sense,” Feril says. “The Fish and Wildlife Service has been great to work with from top to bottom. It’s been hard to discuss some of these issues, but I think everybody coming at it from the standpoint of wanting to be a good neighbor and not let the passion overshadow the will to get the job done.”

He adds that there is an advantage in that water in the region is not in short supply, and the aquifer is not imperiled in the way that affects the Ogallala out west.

“The streamflow to the refuge is more of a timing issue than a water supply issue,” he says. “The service has been reliant on surface water only because their right is to surface water. I think the ability to augment the flow with groundwater will help a lot.”

Feril says there is a lot of work to get done in designing the augmentation well field and putting it in place, but that it feels good to be working on correcting the issue rather than fighting about it.

“At the end of the day, I’d rather be spending our money on getting things done and not on attorney fees,” he says.

Refuge manager positive but cautious

At Quivira, refuge manager Mike Oldham says he is more optimistic than he was at this time last year.

“Until the actual augmentation plan and the other options are put into place, we don’t know if they actually will work,” he says. “Until the feasibility study and analysis is done, we don’t know how much groundwater can be pumped sustainably. But in theory it should work, and I feel a lot more hopeful than I did before,”

Oldham says he is skeptical that the impairment can be solved by augmentation alone and that the solution will require a plan that utilizes multiple options. He’s also aware of a litany of voluntary efforts previous undertaken only to fail time and again over the last decade or more.

He says he is hopeful that a robust tree removal program upstream will not only help the streamflow but reduce the amount of seed that flows downstream to bring additional invasive trees into the refuge.

Oldham says there has been much less animosity toward the refuge as the community focuses on a positive outcome.

“The priority is going to have to be keeping that stream alive for future generations,” he says. “The real test we face is what happens when the next drought cycle comes and everybody needs maximum water at the same time. And we just don’t know how it’s all going to work. But I think if we all treat it fairly and do our best at conservation, we and find the answer.

“There needs to be an understanding natural wetlands were a primary resource on the landscape and the waterfowl and waterfowl that use it were coming here long before it was established as a refuge. They need the resource it provides. We may look at it as a recreational spot but to those birds it’s the only place to rest in a long, long migratory flight.”