Chasing the Channel- Blog No. 34
2025, Legislature, and Forward Progress
Friends…welcome to 2025 at Friends of the Kaw. The end of the year marked great progress in our work for the Kansas River, thanks to you! We successfully helped people discover the Kansas River while providing educational and outdoor experiences. It was a successful year and we are proud of our accomplishments that included 31 river and cleanup trips with 4,581 volunteer hours, 15 restoration events with 305 volunteer hours, 106 water quality education classes to 2,523 students, 17 media opportunities, 10 events to 10,313 people, and 30 presentations to 2,630 people….whew! All of this with four full time staff, thirteen board members, 705 volunteers, and YOU! Thank you for the gift of your time, membership, and donations that make all this work possible for the Kansas River. She deserves our efforts!
I spent my time as Chair of the Kansas Water Authority (KWA) in 2024 working towards an implementation framework for the Kansas Water Plan. Together with the water related agencies, Kansas Water Authority, Regional Advisory Committees and YOU, we showed up for public meetings and shared our perspective about how water touches our everyday lives. I am proud to share that the KWA’s final report was delivered to Governor Laura Kelly and the Kansas Legislature in January. You can read the final report here.
The Kansas Water Authority also completed our statutory requirement to complete the Annual Report and it was also delivered to Governor Laura Kelly and the Kansas Legislature in January. I also presented this report to three committees during our legislative visits. You can read the Annual Report here.
In the KWA’s Annual Report, we made policy recommendations that include a request to increase funding to the State Water Plan. If you support long term water funding, please reach out to your legislator, and share why it is important to you.
I also was honored to attend the State of the State Address by Governor Laura Kelly. We are grateful for her continued leadership on water issues, as outlined in her Address, which you can find here.
If you follow us on social media, you may have already seen that we did a river check in late December to check on the status of the illegal dump on the Kansas River with the contents of the former Docking Building. We were very pleased to see and report that the debris had been removed. We are thankful to the many agencies, neighbors, and FOK that advocated for the removal of this dump site.
In late 2024, I was accepted to the newly formed Regional Advisory Board for the cleanup of the former Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant in De Soto, KS. As many of you know, De Soto is my hometown where I was raised on the Kansas River. The committee has met once and the meetings are open to the public.
Who is ready for spring? I am not a snow fan, but I do love the moisture. Some of my favorite parts of the winter season at FOK include planning for the coming year. We have mapped out our entire 2025 calendar, which you can find here, so start planning how to make 2025 your RIVER YEAR!
Just yesterday, I loaded all our Beginner Wednesday Paddle events as well as one Beginner Camping event. Signups are open, so get your reservation and reserve your spot here!
We have six big cleanups planned this year, with four offering public opportunities to participate. Those details and signups are coming soon, but for now you can mark your calendar by getting the dates from our calendar: https://kansasriver.org/eventcalendar/. We hope you can join us – we have some big work to do together.
We are bringing back our educational event series this year so stay tuned for more information. Topics this year include Climate Change and the Kansas River, Water Quality in the Kansas River and more! These fun and informative educational events are a great way to socialize and learn more about the river that we all love!
If you have ever wanted to join our Kaw River Guide Program, our workshop will be coming up in early May. We hope you will consider joining our inclusive group of river rats that love to get dirty, pull-out tires, help me with river checks, and help the public. Even if you can only volunteer once or twice a year, it is worth it to spend a day on the water with these river stewards and become a part of the group!
Kim and Joey have been busy with our water quality education program. They are working on curriculum for our online program including creating a groundwater module with the Kansas Geological Survey. We can’t wait to share this new program with all of you when it is finished. In the meantime, they are also getting ready for the spring season in the schools. Joey can’t wait to get back into the classroom and along the local stream to teach students about macro-invertebrates!
Thank you to each one of you that supports our work for the Kansas River. We could not accomplish so much with so few staff without your support and the 700 volunteers that commit to the Kansas River every day.
Join me to slide into spring…sunny days ahead and warmer temperatures make for beautiful river days.
May you always have sand in your shoes…
For the river,
Dawn Buehler
Kansas Riverkeeper
Paddle safely! Use the links below to quickly access information that impacts river conditions.
