Kansas News Service newsletter, Dec. 13, 2019

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Dibs on water Take the irrigation out of Kansas, and you remake modern agriculture in the state. Take too much water from irrigation, and you risk yanking away wetlands from hundreds of species of migratory birds who’ve been stopping in Kansas long before any cattle herds or wheat fields appeared in the state. One proposal would pipe water from wells to the Quivira Wildlife Refuge, essentially cutting into supplies for irrigators. Farms that started irrigating most recently would lose out first. Few legal areas get as complicated, or as contested, as water rights. But one principle holds steady: The past matters. And when the water supply is low, the longer ago a landowner established water rights, the more water they get to use. For now, though, farmers worry that the possibility of the wildlife refuge pressing its rights more aggressively threatens their ability to water their crops. Learn more.   "Quivira [National Wildlife Refuge] doesn't have to make a living off of their water. We do." — Wendy Mawhirter, one of the farmers in the central Kansas water fight. Designer prisons Lawmakers asked Kansans working in the criminal justice system to look at the state’s prisons. That Criminal Justice Reform Commission suggested creating specialty prisons — to handle a growing number of elderly inmates, and to better tackle the drug problems that put so many people behind bars. But the changes could cost tens of millions of dollars for a prison system already so overcrowded it farms prisoners out to a private outfit in Arizona. Here’s the latest. Share Tweet Forward Negotiations pending A 19-year-old player died last year after his first workout with the Garden City Community College football team. Since then, his mother and her attorney have pressured the school about what happened. Now both of Braeden Bradforth’s parents have asked the school for a multi-million dollar settlement in the case. The college has rejected their figure in a move toward mediation. Read what’s happening. Share Tweet Forward Settlement made Federal officials have agreed to pay nearly $7 million, split among 82 veterans, in the wake of the conviction of a physician assistant for sexually assaulting patients at the Veterans Administration hospital in Leavenworth. Mark Wisner assaulted the victims on the job. Understand the case. Share Tweet Forward