By BECKY KISER
Hays Post

The Kansas Water Vision Team is in the midst of a week-long tour to unveil the first draft of the “Vision for the Future of Water in Kansas.”

Meetings will be held in 12 towns, but Hays is not one of them — not yet, anyway.

The six-member team, with representatives from the Kansas Water Office and the Kansas Department of Agriculture, made a presentation in Stockton on Wednesday morning.

Gov. Sam Brownback, who was in Hays Saturday for the Wild West Festival, said the plan is a “series of ideas put together for further public comment.”

“It will be presented in Hays,” he added, a town known statewide for water conservation efforts:

Last fall, Brownback asked his administration to develop a 50-year plan in response to ongoing drought conditions and predictions the Ogallala Aquifer would be nearly depleted in 50 years at current use levels, and the state’s reservoirs would lose 40 percent capacity due to sedimentation.