Topeka ? Federal officials have awarded Kansas $230,720 to better measure water use by irrigators along the Republican River, it was announced Wednesday.

The Kansas Department of Agriculture will receive the money from the U.S. Department of Interior to install flow-measurement equipment in the Republican River basin. The state will make up the rest of the project’s total $495,698 price tag.

In Kansas, the Republican River runs eastward through the north-central part of the state and joins the Smoky Hill River to form the Kansas River.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton said the funds were distributed under a new effort called Water 2025 State Challenge Grants Program.

The program is aimed at protecting scarce water supplies in the west and reducing conflict over water. Kansas was one of six states to receive grants under the program.

“All of these projects make more efficient use of existing water supplies through cooperative partnerships with the Bureau of Reclamation,” Norton said.

In Kansas, the grant will go toward installing equipment on 100 diversions from the Republican River basin that will transmit flow data to a satellite, which will then dump the data to an Internet Web site for regulators to monitor. Water rights holders also could view data on their own appropriations.

This way, state officials can keep tabs on whether water rights holders are exceeding their allowable limit. Most of the water rights goes toward irrigation.

“If people are abusing their water rights, pumping more water than authorized, that can put water limits on everybody,” said Tom Huntzinger, water appropriation program manager for the state agriculture department.

Irrigators in the Republican River basin have had to curtail diversions in five of the six previous years because of inadequate flows of the river, officials said.

Water use is currently checked by state workers out in the field, but the new equipment will provide real-time data that can be checked immediately, Huntzinger said.

Huntzinger said the department will start to install the new equipment in October.

Other states that received grants were Arizona, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Texas.