KGS OFR 2003-55A: Assessment of Water Flowmeter Requirements, State of Kansas.

by Brownie Wilson, Kansas Geological Survey.

This open file report is one of five assessment reports under KGS OFR 2003-55 conducted by the Kansas Geological Survey for the Kansas Water Office and the State Water Plan. This report series serves in part as the contract completion of KWO Contract No. 03-121 entitled, "Assessment: Water Management and Water Conservation." This contract was supported by the State Water Plan Fund.

By 2015, all non-domestic points of diversion meeting predetermined criteria will be metered, gaged or otherwise measured under the authority of K.S.A. 82a-706c and K.S.A. 82a-1028(I). Criteria will include a minimal use requirement and priority area targeting.

INTRODUCTION

In the FY 2004 Kansas Water Plan (KWP), the Kansas Water Authority approved objectives for the year 2015. The objectives were developed to define targets to quantify achievements as part of the implementation of the KWP. The above objective is included in the Water Conservation and Water Management Sections of the FY 2004 Kansas Water Plan.

This assessment report attempts to quantify where water flowmeters are required, who made the requirement, and when those requirements where enacted. The Kansas Water Office (KWO) used KWP funds to contract with the Kansas Geological Survey to complete and finalize this assessment as part of the contract "Assessment: Water Management and Water Conservation", KWO contract no. 03-121.

A "Water Flowmeter" or meter is defined under the Rules and Regulations of the Kansas Water Appropriation Act (K.A.R. 5-1-1) as the combination of a flow-sensing device, measuring chamber, integral or remote display device or register, and any connecting parts required to make a working assemblage to measure, record, and allow determination of flow rate and total quantity of water flowing past the water flowmeter sensor. Water meters must meet a specific list of measuring specifications, installation parameters, and compliance conditions all of which are outlined in the Rules and Regulations of the Kansas Water Appropriation Act.

ASSESSMENT DATA SETS

Currently, the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Water Resources (KDA-DWR) maintains a database that documents both meter installations and requirements as part of the Water Rights Information System (WRIS). However, the WRIS was not setup structurally to store meter information until the KDA-DWR migrated it to an Oracle-based RDBMS in 1996. Since that time, only when a water right is being reviewed by the KDA-DWR (i.e. a change application) is any meter information coded from paper records into the WRIS database. Given other work priorities combined with limited office resources, the KDA-DWR has not fully populated the meter database with historic paper or microfiche records. As such, the current meter information stored in WRIS is inexact in documenting the total number of water rights or points of diversion that currently have flow meters installed or the reason for the meter requirement.

In order to estimate the number of meters currently installed, annual water use report data collected under the authority of the KDA-DWR were reviewed from 1997 to 2001. From these last five years of water use data (1997-2001), water rights that actually reported diverting a measurable quantity of water were reviewed to see if a flowmeter was used to measure that volume at individual points of water diversion. This review is based on a code assigned to each water use report, referred to as the water use report code, which is listed in Table 1.

A five-year time period was chosen, as opposed to a single year review, since there are several valid reasons for not using water each year. Each of these non-use reasons has a distinct water use report code that does not indicate if the point of diversion has a flowmeter or not. At the time this assessment was conducted, 2001 was the last year of publicly available water use data that had been reviewed by the KDA-DWR and KWO under the Water Use Quality Control Program- a data quality control and assurance program.

To establish where water meters are required to be installed, several staff members from the KDA-DWR and Groundwater Management Districts (GMD) were contacted verbally. The spatial extent of the meter order requirement and when the requirement was imposed was recorded.

ASSESSMENT RESULTS

Areas with Special Flowmeter Requirements

Since 1980, the entire state of Kansas has been under a selective meter order with several other regional areas having special meter requirements. Under the authority of the Chief Engineer, the approval of all non-domestic, non-temporary new water right applications and any application to change the point of diversion, place of use, or use made of water shall require the owner of the well or pump site to install of flowmeter on all points of diversion authorized by the water right or approval of application. There are specific justifications where this requirement may be waived. This selective meter order is in effect statewide. This particular meter order does not require existing water rights (those established prior to 1980) to install meters. Only new water right applications since 1980 or when existing water rights apply for a change in the point of diversion, place of use, or use of water will require a meter.

As can be seen from Figure 1, several areas within the state fall under special meter orders with varying degrees of requirements. In 1992, Western Kansas GMD #1, Southwest GMD #3, and Big Bend GMD #5 all issued inclusive meter orders as part of their respective management plans in which all water right wells were required to install flow meters before pumping would be allowed. Western Kansas GMD #1 allowed water rights to install hourly meters if a regular flow meter could not be retrofitted to the existing system provided that the point of diversion undergoes a flow test once every three years or if the well pumps less than 200 gallons per minute. In 1995, the Equus Beds GMD #2 required all approvals on new water right certificates and change applications (i.e. point of diversion, place of use, and/or use made of water) to have a meter installed.

The KDA has several regional areas under exclusive meter requirements in which all water rights are required to have flowmeters installed at the points of water diversions. These areas include the alluvial extent of the tributaries in the Upper Republican River Basin (1997-1998), the Chiskaskia Basin in south-central Kansas (1992), the alluvium from below Kirwin Reservoir to the confluence with Deer Creek (1992), alluvium of the Lower Republican Basin (2002), and the McPherson, Lower Smoky Hill, Burrton, Arkansas River, and Water Creek Intensive Groundwater Use Control Areas (IGUCAs).

The KDA-DWR has also issued meter orders targeted solely to surface water based points of diversion on the Solomon River from Glen Elder to roughly Glasco, Kansas (1980), the North Fork and South Fork Solomon Rivers from Kirwin and Webster, respectively, to Glen Elder (1981), Smoky Hill River from Kanapolis to Solomon (1990), and Chapman Creek (1992). Surface water meters are also required for water rights that are junior (post 1984) to and up-stream from the Minimum Desirable Streamflow values on the Cottonwood, Neosho, and Marais Des Cygnes rivers.

Metered water use, 1997-2001

During the calendar years from 1997 to 2001, 30,969 individual points of diversions that were coded as reporting to divert a measurable quantity of water in Kansas. Of those, 23,599 or approximately 76 percent were coded as reporting a metered quantity at least once during that time period (Table 2).

On a regional basis, the percentage of points of diversion where a water right reported using some type of flowmeter reflects the meter requirement areas (Figure 1). Figure 2 shows the spatial distribution for points of diversions that had a water right reporting a metered quantity of water at least once from 1997 to 2001 and which ones did not. Basins in the southwest and south central areas of Kansas, which have mandatory meter requirements, also have the highest reported meter percentages in the state. The Cimarron Basin is the highest with over 97 percent of the water use reports having been coded at least once a metered quantity from 1997 to 2001. Both the Upper and Lower Arkansas Basins are high as well with both basins being over 80 percent. These percentages drop towards the west-central and northwest areas of Kansas, which is likely a reflection of the varying GMD-based meter requirements. The Upper Republican and Solomon basins specifically have the lowest meter percentages under this methodology.

In general, those basins in eastern Kansas where surface water represents the primary source of water, such as the Neosho, Marias Des Cygnes, Missouri, and Walnut, also have high meter percentages. The Verdigris basin is the anomaly to this; however, it consistently has the lowest total amount of water reported used each year. In comparison, the eastern Kansas basins that have relatively significant ground-water development, namely the Kansas-Lower Republican and the Smoky Hill - Saline basins, also have lower meter percentages.

CONCLUSION

This assessment provides one estimate of the number of non-domestic points of diversion that are metered by reviewing water use reports from 1997 to 2001. Under this review, over 76 percent of the points of diversion in Kansas, where a water right reported a measurable quantity of water diverted from 1997 to 2001, had that quantity reported by a meter at least once during the time period.

Results from this assessment indicate that areas of southwest Kansas and south-central Kansas have the highest percentage of metered water use in Kansas, with the highest being in the Cimarron Basin where over 97 percent of the water-use reports had reported a metered quantity sometime from 1997 to 2001. These high percentages are attributed to the mandatory meter orders required by both the South Western Kansas GMD #3 and Big Bend GMD #5. Areas of northwestern and north-central Kansas had the lowest meter percentages, which is a reflection of the selective nature and smaller spatial scale of various meter orders.

The water-use-based methodology of this assessment was chosen because the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Water Resources' Water Rights Information System database has not yet been fully coded with detailed meter information currently stored on paper or microfiche files. As such, this report does not account for any meter activity that may have occurred since 2001. In addition, since there are a variety of reasons why a water right may not report the use of a meter on water use reports (meter malfunction, valid reason for the non-use of water, etc…), results from this assessment should be viewed with care.

It is a recommendation of this assessment that funds from the Kansas Water Plan Fund be made available the Kansas Department of Agriculture-Division of Water Resources with the specific purpose of reviewing the paper water right records and populate the WRIS database accordingly. This would provide a true count of the number of points of diversion in Kansas that have installed meters.

Return to KGS OFR 2003-55.