| This study explores the historic relationship between Kansas' water law, its physical environment and the development of its social and economic institutions. Since statehood, social and economic development in Kansas was directly tied to the availability and use of one of the state's most limited and precious resources: water. As settlement and development occurred, the people of Kansas used law to order their relationship with the land. As the potentials and opportunities for land use changed along with technology the law also changed, reflecting the human need to order and explain the world around them. Unlike other western states, Kansas used the riparian doctrine of water rights until 1945, when like all other western states it adopted the doctrine of prior appropriation. Kansas then, stands out as an anomaly that has been heretofore unexplored. Unlike other states, the legal change in Kansas was the result of a long-lived process of living with and reacting to the climate, aridity, economic opportunities and soil.;Following the 1945 Water Appropriation Act, Kansans initiated an aggressive water management policy aimed at the complete use of all the state's water. As a result, residents enjoyed a period of great economic prosperity. In the three decades that followed the adoption of prior appropriation the legislature refined the state's water management structure, and created a process for comprehensive water resource planning. However, by the 1970s the problem of water depletion and scarcity took center stage in the statewide discussion of water. Moreover, the number of interested and concerned people and agencies likewise grew, which put the state's water managers and its major water users, especially irrigators, under scrutiny for the first time. After 1945 the water law designed to encourage the complete use of water became the target of criticism, especially when depletion became a critical problem Kansans responded to the problems by broadening water use goals to include preservation of native species and habitat in addition to traditional economic goals. As a result, the events of the late 20th century severely tested the state's water law, and challenged many of the assumptions Kansas citizens had historically made about water resource use. |
