City restricts daytime private well watering in Hays
The order aims to prevent water waste as the city expands its long-standing conservation efforts.
HAYS, Kan. — In a bid to curb water waste and evaporation during the hottest months of the year, state regulators have ordered residents in Hays to stop using private wells for daytime landscaping irrigation. Operating under the administration of Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, the Kansas Department of Agriculture’s Division of Water Resources issued the control order at the city's request. The mandate prohibits the watering of lawns and vegetation from privately owned wells between noon and 7 p.m. daily from June 1 through Sept. 30. State officials, led by Chief Engineer Earl Lewis, enacted the rule to combat unnecessary water loss from intense summer winds and evaporation, ensuring the increasingly scarce resource is used efficiently.
The summertime well restrictions expand upon strict, year-round water conservation rules already enforced in the city of roughly 21,000 residents. Those existing municipal measures include outright bans on washing down sidewalks and driveways, allowing water to escape from plumbing leaks, and letting landscape irrigation run off into streets. According to Hays Water Conservation Specialist Holly Dickman, the latest order leverages an Intensive Groundwater Use Control Area established in 1985, which grants the state authority to address preventable water waste from private wells that would otherwise fall outside municipal jurisdiction. City officials are urging all residents and businesses to embrace both indoor and outdoor conservation measures to protect the region's limited groundwater supplies.
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