Kansas Water Office

TOPEKA–While 21 public meetings have been held, there are five more to be hosted in March by the Water Vision Regional Goal Leadership Teams to begin the goal setting process to help develop water supply goals for each region.

Each of the 14 teams are participating in a public scoping process in their region to develop and draft water supply goals based on public input and available resource condition information.

Stakeholders’ input is helpful to each team to identify the region’s water supply priorities. Water supply priorities and goals should seek to implement the following Vision statement:

Kansans act on a shared commitment to have the water resources necessary to support the state’s social, economic and natural resource needs for current and future generations.

The most resounding message Kansas citizens shared with the Water Vision Team last year during the vision tour was the need for regional water supply goals, instead of statewide water supply goals.

At the upcoming meetings the public will be asked to share their input on specific topics that are water supply issues for their region. Trained facilitators from Kansas State University Research and Extension as well as the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy will be helping with the goal development and facilitate the public meetings. All regional stakeholders and citizens are encouraged to attend one of the remaining input sessions.

Tuesday, March 24
 Equus-Walnut
Wichita, KS – 7 p.m., City Council Chambers, 455 N. Main
Thursday, March 26
 Solomon-Republican
Phillipsburg, KS – 7 p.m., 4-H Building, 1481 Hwy 183
Monday, March 30
 Red Hills
Medicine Lodge –7 p.m., Jr./Sr. High School Gym, 400 W El Dorado Ave
Tuesday, March 31
 Equus-Walnut
El Dorado, KS – 7 p.m., Civic Center, 201 E. Central
 Solomon-Republican
Beloit, KS – 7 p.m., Beloit Technical College, Conference Room, 3033 US Hwy 24

The teams will present the proposed draft regional water supply goals to the Kansas Water Authority (KWA) in May. The KWA will provide advice towards further development of the regional goals with final goals to be approved in August 2015.

For more information on the public meetings, water supply information about each region or read the final version of the Long-Term Vision for the Future of Water Supply in Kansas, visit www.kwo.org.