Wichita ? Kansas in the next 150 years will rely less on agriculture as the backbone fueling its economy and more on the ingenuity and resilience of its urban residents to thrive.

The life and dreams for many rural Kansans will change in the next few decades as small towns hover on the precipice of growing or silently disappearing from the map.

Water will be the key resource and will determine whose jobs, lifestyles and property will survive.

Counties and services in sparsely populated areas will consolidate while cities, predominantly in eastern Kansas, will continue to grow and become larger metroplexes than they already are.

Still, Kansas will survive, said experts and officials who were asked about what our state — celebrating its 150th birthday in 2011 — will look like 150 years from now.

Not only will the state survive, they say, it might even become kind of hip.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Kansas provided the spark for the Civil War, gave rise to the Pentecostal movement, Prohibition and social reform. Following World War II, the nation’s attention shifted to the East and West Coasts. Now, the cycle may be coming full turn, some say.

As people become disenchanted with life in the coastal cities, they may turn to places like Kansas for cheaper land and housing opportunities.

Just like they did 150 years ago, people 150 years from now may look to Kansas for a chance to build their version of the American Dream — a nice house, a little piece of acreage, a place to live.

“The thing that pushed me over the edge was being a little burned out and sick and tired of the East Coast congestion,” said Bill Ihling, who lives near Reading in Lyon County.

He spent nearly five decades in New Jersey, but in 2004 he and his wife moved to Kansas. They purchased a 100-acre farm where he now has a few cows and a big garden.

“The first time I came to Kansas was when I was 11 years old,” he said. “My family and I took a cross-country road trip on our way to the Rocky Mountains.

“Everyone was looking out the window and saying this land is so flat. But my nose was pressed to the glass the entire time. I had never seen scenery like that. Something in my brain snapped. The prairies have been calling me ever since.”

Water concerns

Currently, Kansas is using more water than it can replenish.

Nearly 86 percent of all water used in Kansas goes to agriculture, according to Mike Hayden, former Kansas governor and secretary of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. Of that amount, 80 percent is devoted to irrigation.

Most of that water comes from the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest aquifers, covering almost all of western Kansas. Because of demands from livestock and irrigation systems, some estimates predict the aquifer will dry up in about 25 years.

“We cannot continue to pump water at the rate and level we are now,” said Rex Buchanan, interim director of the Kansas Geological Survey. “If you look at some areas of the map, there are areas where the game will be over fairly quickly — like in the next 10 to 15 years, let alone 150 years from now.”

Hayden said if the aquifer declines, water rights will be purchased for nonagricultural uses.

New farming methods

Farming practices also will shift, in part because of water issues. There will be more emphasis on dryland farming and at developing drought-resistant crops. Farms will get bigger and more corporate.

“A hundred years ago if you farmed with 300 acres you were a big operator, especially if you were in western Kansas,” Hayden said. “Today, just to survive, you have got to have at least 1,000 acres and you are probably not surviving very well on that.”

As water becomes more in demand, circle irrigation systems will begin to shut down. It may cause feed yards — an iconic symbol of western Kansas — to move elsewhere, Hayden said.

“Feedlots were located in southwestern Kansas because of the climate and because the feed supply is right there,” he said. “Feedlots could relocate to places, such as Iowa, where they can grow 200-bushel-to-the-acre corn without irrigation.”

And, as the feedlots go, so go the people associated with those industries, Hayden said.

Gas and minerals

In addition to water, there is concern that the Hugoton natural gas field in the southwest corner of the state may also disappear over the next 150 years.

“Clearly gas and water are limited,” Hayden said. “We are not making any more. Once it is used, it is gone.

“The Hugoton fields have been mined for 80 years. Our reserves are looking less vital and viable all the time. This will change the face of western Kansas.”

Buchanan said he doesn’t know whether that will happen.

“What we thought we would be doing in terms of mineral depletion has not come to pass,” he said. “It doesn’t show any real signs that it will. Things can change and can change a lot when they are driven by technology.”

In the meantime, there will be increasing concern for the environment, Buchanan said.

“A hundred and fifty years ago, nobody was talking about the Ogallala aquifer, they barely knew it existed,” Buchanan said. “And, in the 1870s, there was a lot of lead and zinc mining going on in southeastern Kansas that soon became a big environmental concern.”

Evaporation pits, developed less than a half century ago with oil and gas drilling, now are major concerns as the saltwater mixes with groundwater. And fracking, the process of shooting pressurized water, sand and chemicals under those wells, is currently coming under scrutiny amid accusations it contaminates groundwater.

Population shifts

Eastern Kansas — Manhattan, Topeka, Lawrence and the cities around Kansas City — will get more populated in the next 150 years. Wichita will keep growing as will all the towns north of Wichita along I-135 to Salina.

The communities north of Salina to the Nebraska state line and those east and west to the Missouri and Colorado state lines will all get smaller, as will anything west of Hutchinson.

Meanwhile, as fewer people live on farms, smaller communities will disappear or reinvent themselves.

“Towns are either growing or dying, they aren’t staying stagnant,” said Katie Eisenhour, executive director of the Scott City Area Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development. “Luckily, we are growing.”

From 2000 to 2010, the town’s population grew 73 percent. The town’s population now exceeds 4,000 residents, with a growing population of Hispanics shifting the dynamics of life in Scott City.

“If you don’t integrate and welcome and get people of other cultures involved at the government level, pretty soon you will have two separate communities,” she said. “We won’t tolerate that. People come here wanting to find jobs. And even with 3.5 percent unemployment, if you want to work, you’ll find a job.”

As small towns disappear, many fear that the sense of community for many Kansans will also disappear.

“If we lose just one small town, maybe it doesn’t matter,” said Marci Penner, director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation, which promotes rural culture.

“But losing the collection of all of them makes a difference in who and what Kansas is. People don’t know the value of small towns if they don’t live in them or are somehow connected to them.”