Kickapoo Environmental Office

Happy Hump Day!

Today, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is taking up S.2154, the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas Water Rights Settlement Agreement Act, which is a bill to approve the Tribe's Agreement by the same name.

Some notables of the Agreement include (1) the Tribe's water right priority date is 10/24/1832, or 29 years prior to Kansas statehood (1/29/1861), making it the senior water rights holder; (2) the Tribe can annually divert up to 4,705 acre-feet of water and can store up to 18,520 acre-feet; and (3) significantly, in times of shortage, the Tribe can request (with the force of federal law) the curtailment of upstream non-domestic water rights.

This is significant for the Tribe because it solidifies and ratifies the Tribe's legal access to water. At times in the past when drought and upstream diversions shrunk the Tribe's primary drinking water source to nill, the Tribe literally ran out of water and large water tankers had to be brought in.

Info on today's hearing (at 1:30PM CST today) can be found over at https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/s2154. The Tribe's Settlement agreement can be found at https://www.agriculture.ks.gov/docs/default-source/dwr-water-appropriation-documents/kickapoo_wrsettlementagreement_20160909.pdf?sfvrsn=4

www.agriculture.ks.gov