Lawrence would need to pump up its water-treatment capabilities to meet the area’s growth needs in the next four decades, under a plan being studied by a regional water cooperative.

Under the plan, Lawrence would provide 5.04 million gallons a day to three of the city’s contract customers: Douglas County Rural Water Districts No. 4 and 5, plus the city of Baldwin, which also provides water to the cities of Edgerton and Wellsville.

The total — nearly double the 2.86 million gallons a day authorized under existing contracts — would be enough to meet the needs of the water users through 2040, according to a report from the Quad County Water Cooperative.

The cooperative is a coalition of 14 governments and water districts in north-central Kansas that are planning ahead for quenching a growing population’s thirst for water.

Lawrence officials haven’t committed to following through with the increase but are willing to participate in discussions that could lead to a coordinated approach to treating and distributing water.

Representatives from cooperative-member governments intend to meet this year to review three options for supplying water, and to settle on a single course.

“The overall goal of everyone that’s supplying water is to look at their long-term needs, and determine what’s going to happen over the next 40 or 50 years,” said Chris Stewart, Lawrence’s assistant director of utilities for water. “The Quad County group is formed to do just that.

“We plan 40 years into the future, at a minimum, to determine what we need to do in terms of water. It’s good that everybody is looking out for themselves, just like we do.”

Lawrence has plenty of water, stored in Clinton Lake and the Kansas River, to handle the city’s own expansion, Stewart said.

But other water users don’t.

Douglas County Rural Water District No. 3, for one, is telling the Kansas Water Office that its customers west of Lecompton need 200 million gallons of water a year. The district doesn’t have access to that much water, and it wants the state to find some by taking away water in Clinton Lake that currently is set aside for Lawrence.

District No. 3 isn’t part of the cooperative, but its push for more water — through the first case of its kind in Kansas — indicates the kind of competition that is only expected to increase in the years ahead.

“We think water is a real problem in the country, (and) we think water is a real problem in the state of Kansas, but we tend to think it’s not us,” said Bob Johnson, chairman of the Douglas County Commission. “And the fact of the matter is, it is us.

“The water issues are not ones that impact us today, but rather — planning for the future and our growth — will we have the resources to provide the water we need? I think the answer to that is yes, but everybody needs to be thinking about protecting those rights and making sure we have them for the future.”

By working through the cooperative, Johnson said, officials with other districts and governments at least will be able to think about the big picture as it pertains to growth — and work as cooperatively as possible to meet the area’s needs.

“That’s what we want to find out: What happens next?” Johnson said.