Rex Buchanan, Interim Director of the Kansas Geological Survey and the author of books about Kansas geology and water, will present a program at the Rice County Historical Society’s Coronado Quivira Museum on Monday, April 24, 2017 at 7:00 p.m. He will highlight how water issues today define much about the people of Kansas – past, present, and future.
Early evidence of Native peoples in Kansas shows that they lived near springs, seeps,
and rivers. Later, European settlers moved along water sources, and eventually cities were
established in areas with plentiful water supplies. Even today, demographic changes in Kansas
are the result of water: scarcity connected to water-level declines in the Ogallala Aquifer is
impacting depopulation in western Kansas, whereas some eastern Kansas counties, which
are relatively water-rich, are gaining population. Recently the state government developed a
50-year water planning vision, identifying two major issues: reservoir sedimentation and the
rapid drawdown of the Ogallala portion of the High Plains Aquifer in western Kansas.
The presentation is open to the public and is underwritten by a grant from the Kansas Humanities Council.
The Museum is located at 105 West Lyon, Lyons, Kansas. Call 620 257-3941 for more information.
