COLBY ? Northwest Kansas water officials have decided to form a nonprofit foundation to buy water rights and reduce water use from the dwindling Ogallala Aquifer.

The foundation formed by the Northwest Kansas Groundwater Management District No. 4 in Colby will find money wherever it can: through the federal farm program, from charitable organizations and with a 9-cent levy on water rights in the district. That levy will generate $77,000.

Directors of the district had been frustrated by efforts to use Environmental Water Quality Incentives Program, or EQIP, which pays farmers not to irrigate much like the Conservation Reserve Program.

Early on, district manager Wayne Bossert had hoped EQIP could help wean area farmers from irrigation water, reducing the demand on the Ogallala Aquifer.

But Bossert said procedural hurdles and low payment rates likely would prevent farmers from using that aspect of the farm program. Money available through EQIP is about half of what experts say is needed to attract any existing water users.

“What I was looking at was an honest way to reduce water use,” Bossert said. “And the way to do that is to not use water.”

The Ogallala stretches from northern Texas to South Dakota and is a major source of water on the High Plains. Rural irrigation in western Kansas has been drawing water from the aquifer faster than nature can replace it, and in some areas the aquifer has dried out.

Exactly how water rights in Groundwater District No. 4 would be taken out of use would depend on money and the landowner.

The three scenarios envisioned are:

• Buying water rights outright over a period of time.
• Using the water rights conservation program, a set-aside that would entail the use of incentives.
• Buying down the use of water, for example, to half of what is normally used.

“It gives people different levels to participate,” Bossert said.