Wichita ? New controls on factory-style farms do nothing to protect the drinking water supply for the city, the state’s chief health officer says.

“They take no action whatsoever for the protection of groundwater,” said Clyde Graeber, secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. “They just neglect it. That is of concern to me. We must do something to protect the groundwater.”

Nor is the federal government attempting to address odors, the No. 1 complaint most neighbors have about large-scale livestock operations, Graeber said.

Now, Gov.-elect Kathleen Sebelius must decide whether to adopt state rules that were written two years ago to protect water in the Equus Bed, from which Wichita and 20 other cities draw their water supply. Graeber said the rules were put on hold pending the new federal requirements, which were released Monday by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

At issue are lagoons, or large pits, which are used to store millions of gallons of livestock waste. Cities are worried that the waste will seep into drinking water supplies.

In central Kansas, several small lagoons sit on top of the Equus Beds, the underground source of drinking water for a half-million people, including residents of Wichita, Newton, Andover, McPherson and Rose Hill.

For years Wichita and neighboring cities have pushed for tougher rules to protect the water, said Jerry Blain of the Wichita Water Department.

In response, the state health department drew up additional requirements to protect areas that are easily contaminated, Graeber said. That includes the Equus Beds. But those rules, which were based on a four-year study by Kansas State University that concluded that Wichita’s water supply was vulnerable to pollution, were never adopted.

Graeber said he hoped to meet with Sebelius to discuss the need for the regulations. Kansas already complies with 90 to 95 percent of the new federal requirements, he said.

Nicole Corcoran-Basso, a spokeswoman for Sebelius, said Kansas already had strong livestock regulations. The governor-elect needs additional information before deciding whether changes are needed, she said.

The Kansas Pork Producers declined to comment, saying they were still reviewing the 400 pages of new federal regulations and had not seen a draft of the state rules.

Graeber had promised the new rules in June 2000 during a public meeting with officials from the cities that use the Equus Beds for drinking water. Graeber said he would require plastic liners to be installed in some lagoons to reduce the amount of livestock waste that dripped into water. That would cost about $10,000 per lagoon.

Hog farms became an issue in the 1990s, when Seaboard Farms moved about 1 million hogs into southwest Kansas.