Kansas Water Office seeks $3.8 million in State Water Plan Fund enhancements, urges restoration of reappropriations

At a legislative budget hearing, the Kansas Water Office outlined its fiscal 2026 and 2027 requests and asked lawmakers to restore reappropriated State Water Plan Fund (SWPF) dollars the special committee on state budget deleted.

Luke Drury, senior fiscal analyst with Legislative Research, told the committee roughly $7.9 million in SWPF funds were reappropriated from FY2025 into FY2026 and noted the governor’s recommendations differ from the special committee’s primarily on whether those reappropriations should be restored. "If it is in parentheses, that delineates a reduction or cut," Drury said, explaining the notation on the budget sheets.

The office’s core FY2027 enhancement request totals about $3,800,000 in SWPF: approximately $2.3 million for water-planning and project development and $1.5 million for a new reservoir sediment-management initiative. Drury described the water-planning line as a new tool to support basin-level modeling, gap analysis and project development; the reservoir sediment-management line would provide flexibility to fund projects such as the John Redmond hydro-suction pilot and similar efforts rather than creating separate single-project lines.

"The enhancement provide[s] that second year of total $3,000,000 State Water Plan Fund support for Redmond hydro-suction," said Matt Unruh, assistant director of the Kansas Water Office, confirming that FY2026 represented year one of a two-year funding sequence for that pilot.

Connie Owen, director of the Kansas Water Office, highlighted six reappropriation lines the agency asks the committee to restore, including operation and maintenance contracts with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, conservation‑assistance technical contracts to support small public water suppliers, assessment and evaluation contracts with federal partners, reservoir and water-quality research, education/outreach, and grant administration for House Bill 2302 projects. Owen said some reappropriations are obligations — for example, Corps invoices may arrive on a schedule that does not match state budgeting cycles — and therefore cannot be eliminated without harming contractors or interrupting services. "The Corps bills us. We have to pay," Owen said.

Owen also identified four SWPF lines the office could tolerate lapsing if necessary, which together would free roughly $1,135,000; the agency said those savings could help advance the water-planning enhancement if the committee chose that tradeoff.

Other highlights of the office’s presentation included a new grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation ($500,000 anticipated in FY2026) for playa restorations and a FY2025 spike in "other assistance" spending tied to the projects and grants fund (about $42.4 million in FY2025 actuals). Drury noted historical capital spending in FY2022 that reflected debt payoff for Big Hill, Clinton and Hillsdale reservoirs, and warned members that SWPF flows and programmatic needs make the water-budget landscape complex.

The committee asked staff to circulate additional detail and work the numbers during bill work sessions. The hearing closed with the chair saying the committee would take up both the Water Office and KDHE budgets at their next work session.