WATER LEGISLATION AND PROGRESS REPORT

House Bill 2279 mandates that Groundwater Management Districts (GMD’s) file annual progress reports with the Kansas Legislature and conservation action plans with the Chief Engineer at The Kansas Department of Agriculture Division of Water Resources. The Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources committee held hearings on the bill before amending certain portions of the bill and sending it to the full Senate. House Bill 2302 dedicates certain sales tax revenues to the State Water Plan Fund with specific directions to create technical resources for GMD’s and water project grant funds. This bill was also heard in the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources committee. This bill was heavily amended. The funding source was changed from a dedicated sales tax revenue source to funding coming straight from the State General Fund (SGF). The House version and now the Senate version strive to increase the State Water Plan Fund from $25 million to near $70 million annually. These Senate-amended versions of HB 2279 and HB 2302 (now changed to Senate sub. for HB 2302) will pass the full Senate next week and be put into a House-Senate conference committee to find an acceptable compromise.

SOUTHWEST POWER POOL (SPP)

SPP coordinates the movement of high-power electricity among 14 central U.S. including Kansas. There are 1,000 power plants in the SPP region and 70,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines serving 18 million people. In 2022, renewable energy (primarily wind) accounted for 37% of power production with coal at 33% and natural gas at 21%. SPP is one of seven Regional Transmission Organizations (RTO’s) in the country and has the lowest wholesale electric rates of the seven given the expansion of wind energy. There are now 15,000 wind turbines in the SPP.

SPP plays a role like that of an airport traffic controller. SPP does not own any of the power plants or the transmission lines. SPP coordinates the movement of power around the 14 states. Power generators bid an amount of power into the SPP wholesale market a day ahead of time and SPP determines the least cost and most reliable power generation. The 1,000 generating units are controlled by 300 marketing participants from investor-owned utilities to rural cooperatives to municipal power companies. This coordinated SPP electricity wholesale market topped $50 Billion in sales in 2022.

For a new power producer to join the SPP, they must request participation years ahead of producing power. SPP now has over 600 requests in line for future addition to the system including a number of battery storage projects. SPP has new power projections going out 25 years. It is essentially all renewable sources (wind and solar) and utility battery storage. SPP has increased its expertise in handling renewables the last twenty years, especially by being good at forecasting wind. Twenty years ago, SPP thought they could handle at most 30% of power production by wind, but now that figure can be 65-70%. There have been days when all the electricity on the SPP grid came from wind. Today (without adequate battery storage yet) - SPP relies on a 150 fast start natural gas plants (25 – 200 MWs) that can start up in minutes and balance the variability of wind and solar production.

Kansas is a net power producer for the SPP by producing 60,000 MWs of power but the load in Kansas is 40,000 MWs. For the SPP system, Kansas produces 21% of the power and uses 16% of the demand. While there are 7 RTO’s nationwide that covers 2/3’s of the country, 1/3rd has no coordinated grid, particularly in the west (except for California). SPP is now providing certain transmission forecasting services and reliability tests to some of the western states. For ten years, there have been 7 high voltage direct current transmission lines tying SPP to the western states. These lines are fully subscribed and too small to significantly increase renewable power going west from Kansas. A large number of the existing coal plants were built in the 1970s and early 1980s, so age is becoming a real factor. SPP believes they can get to 75-80% renewable energy around the clock. It seems very possible that the western states will develop their own RTO as a portion of the SPP system.

On this video presentation, there are maps showing where RTO’s operate. There are the charts on power production and power demands. There are some insightful committee questions at the end of the presentation.

House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee

STATE BUDGET AND PUBLIC EDUCATION MANIPULATIONS

After weeks of committee and subcommittee work on the State Budget, Senate leadership on the Senate Ways & Means committee trashed that hard work and inserted arbitrary, undiscussed reductions to the proposed Governor’s budget and the thoughtful recommendations of Senate committees. On the Senate floor, an arbitrary 3.5% cut was made to most of State government except for education, medical programs and interest on the debt. The proposed 5% state employee salary increase was stripped out as was the state savings from expanding Medicaid. This altered budget was voted out of the full Senate while the House struggles to pass their version of a State budget. The House will pass a budget early next week and these two versions of the State budget will be put into a House-Senate conference committee to hammer out some compromise. This compromise will be brought to the floor of both chambers with no

opportunity for any amendments. Legislators have two choices – pass the compromise or send it back to the six-member conference committee. While House-Senate conference committees start with 4 Republicans and 2 Democrats. If no consensus can be reached, legislative maneuvers will eventually give the 4 Republicans complete control. The floor votes will depict the unanimity of Republican lawmakers and the Governor’s power in this process. The Senate’s budget and its drastic cuts were made to provide greater latitude to cut more taxes for their donors.

While the House has struggled over the State budget, they have isolated public education in two bills – SB 83 and SB 113. SB 83 has the funding for special education along with expanded support for private school tax credits and vouchers. SB 113 has the rest of the budget for public schools along with amendments allowing private school students to participate in public school athletics and allowing school districts to pay school board members. These two bills have passed the full House and will be considered by the Senate. The Senate could vote to accept these heavily amended bills at which time they would head to the Governor’s desk for a certain veto. The other course of action would be for the Senate to non-concur in these two bills and place them in a Senate-House conference committee. April 6 is the final day of the regular session. Heavy-lifting remains to pass a constitutionally mandated balanced State budget that includes education funding along with tax cuts. The veto session begins April 26 and time will tell how many fundamental policy issues remain?

LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OBSERVER CALLS

Kansas Legislature Website