Gov. Sam Brownback and the legislative leadership in Topeka are to be commended for making water a focus in the coming legislative session. And it’s encouraging that a Lawrence legislator — Republican state Rep. Tom Sloan — will play a key role by chairing the new Water and Environment Committee.

Water is a bipartisan issue. There is consensus across party lines that the water issues Kansas faces are serious. Drought, erosion and excessive usage pose long-term threats to Kansas’ aquifers, reservoirs and rivers.

Consider that the Kansas Department of Health and Environment says the Ogallala Aquifer in western Kansas is responsible for $2 billion a year in beef production and $1.75 billion a year in corn production and that the irrigated land above it is valued at roughly $5 billion. In eastern Kansas, reservoirs provide water to two-thirds of the state’s population. Those reservoirs are responsible for about 60 percent of the state’s electricity production.

If the state does nothing over the next 50 years, KDHE estimates 70 percent of the aquifer will be depleted and 40 percent of the irrigated land above it will no longer be able to support irrigation. In addition, the water supply in federal reservoirs will be 40 percent filled with sediment, and five of the seven basins that support reservoirs won’t be able to meet demand during a drought.

In the face of such sobering statistics there is little debate that Kansas faces serious challenges in ensuring all users — residential, commercial and agricultural — have adequate access to the water they need. But there is plenty of debate over exactly how to address the issues.

That’s where Sloan and the new Water and Environment Committee come in. The committee is expected to develop recommendations for funding a 50-year plan for managing that state’s water resources. The water management plan was developed by a blue-ribbon panel appointed in 2013 by Brownback.

Recommendations from the panel were issued in 2015. Among the steps in the plan were some that were relatively inexpensive such as encouraging farmers to switch to low-water crops and encouraging consumers to conserve water. But others, such as dredging silt out of federal reservoirs and creating additional lakes, could be significant expenses.

Estimates are that funding the water management plan will cost $150 million in the next three years. There will be no shortage of arguments about how to generate those funds or whether they will be made available at all. After all, the state faces a serious budget shortfall and funds designated for water resource management have, in the past, been used instead to shore up the budget.

It’s encouraging that the state is giving renewed attention to addressing water issues. Now, the hard work begins for Sloan and others in Topeka.