By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
The Kansas Supreme Court has set the oral argument date for one of the legal challenges in the R9 water case, which seeks to transfer Hays- and Russell-owned water from their ranch in Edwards County.
The case goes back to the original conversion of the cities' water rights from agricultural use to municipal use, said Toby Dougherty, Hays city manager.
"A group of irrigators challenged that in district court. The district court took their time to rule on it, but eventually ruled it, and resoundingly upheld the master order, which governs the conversion of those water rights.
Challenges and appeals continued on both sides.
"That group of irrigators appealed. We counter-appealed to the state Supreme Court, trying to skip appellate court," Dougherty said. "The Supreme Court kind of took their time in a procedural way, getting it briefed and onboarded."
The argument has been set for Dec. 15 at 9 a.m. A livestream link is available here.
"We are hoping for a quick ruling on the matter. We see no reason why the Supreme Court would overturn what a judge has already resoundingly upheld," Dougherty said.
Once the Supreme Court rules in the cities' and the state's favor, and the master order, that specific portion of the long legal process will have come to an end.
"There's no further court they can seek appeal at," Dougherty said.
The Water Transfer Hearing Panel (chief engineers of the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of Water Resources, the director of the Kansas Water Office, and the director of the Department of Health and Environment, Division of Environment) will then be allowed to convene and hold a final hearing, which is required by state statute.
The Kansas Water Transfer Act, K.S.A. 82a-1501, et seq., requires the panel's approval of projects that propose to transport 2,000 acre-feet of water or more per year for beneficial use more than 35 miles from the source.
This project is the first time such a long-distance transfer will have happened in Kansas.
Change of use applications, however, are regular and routine, Dougherty said.
"We're arguing at the Supreme Court that it happens all the time.
"In fact, there was a dairy built last year in Edwards County about 10 miles up the road from our property that converted water rights from irrigation to stock watering, which is the exact same process we went through.
"There was no local opposition, and the process took six months from start to finish."
Legal wrangling between WaterPACK (Water Protection Association of Central Kansas), the Edwards County Commission and the Edwards County Planning Commission, which oppose the pipeline, and Hays and Russell has been underway for almost 11 years.
Dougherty, who just surpassed his 20th year of employment with the city, recently attended major water industry conferences in Tucson, Arizona, and Topeka, where he discussed Hays' water policies and the R9 project.
"We have people contacting us all the time," Mayor Sandy Jacobs said, "and talking to Holly Dickman (Hays' water conservation specialist) about how we conserve and how we put these practices in place. ... We've been doing this since 1996, when Hays was named an "All America City."