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The Lakes And Reservoirs Of Kansas: Controlling The Floods

Surrounded by rivers and other bodies of water, Kansas is often prone to flooding. To protect flooding to lower lands, several reservoirs have been built across the state. On the other hand, the reservoirs of Kansas were also used for other purposes: for recreation, water control, fish management, and water supply.

A reservoir is a man-made vessel used to collect floodwater (when there's high rainfall) and keep it in reserve until needed for use. To create a reservoir, a dam is built. The dam has to sturdy enough to handle large volumes of water. After a dam is finished, stream is made to flow behind the structure. A reservoir has other uses besides flood control: for irrigation, to control canal flow, to generate hydroelectricity, and for civic recreation purposes such as fishing and boating.

Kansas has four well known reservoirs, found in various locations across the state.

Tuttle Creek Lake is located in northern Kansas on the Big Blue River. This man-made reservoir was built by the Army Corp of Engineers. Its construction was driven by the foreseen need to protect northern Kansas and Manhattan from other future flooding following the Great Flood of 1951. Though met with opposition, the state pushed on with the reservoir project. In the process, 10 towns were submerged when the dam started to fill up. Nonetheless, the dam proved triumph of engineering when it saved neighboring towns from the Great Flood of 1993. When floodwaters reached as high as 63 feet, the dam held the water back.

In the spillway channel of the Tuttle Creek Lake, there's 290-year old canyon. It was exposed three weeks after the gates were closed to abate the 1993 flood.

The John Redmond Reservoir is located in the Neosho River Valley in Coffee County, Kansas. Started in 1959, the reservoir was completed in 1963 and was available for flood control use in 1964. The reservoir is built with a spillway and earth-fill embankment. The spillway is located on the left abutment, and can open up to 560 feet. 86.5 feet high and 21, 790 feet wide, the reservoir serves multiple uses: for flood control, recreation, water supply, and control of water quality.

Cheney Reservoir in South Central Kansas was built by the Bureau of Reclamation. Cheney Reservoir is a complex consisting of a lake, a state park, wildlife area, and a conservation pool. Sitting within the North Fork of the Ninnescah River valley, Cheney Reservoir is used for flood control, recreation, wildlife management, and drinking water supply for Wichita, Kansas. Sitting in the flat, open plains of the state's central region, the lake is a favorite lake for sailing.

On the eastern part of Kansas, there's Perry Lake (or Perry Dam), the 4th largest reservoir in the state. Started in 1964, the dam was built by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Completed in 1970, Perry Lake has a total of 25, 839 acres of pool for flood control. It provides flood protection of the Delaware River, Kansas River, Mississippi River, and Missouri River. Protected valleys include Perry, Bonner Springs, Kansas City, and Lawrence. Perry Lake has a maximum storage capacity of 243,000 acre feet and drains a total area of 1,117 square miles.

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Samson Paulotti does writeups for homeowners for Kansas Restoration and The Restoration Resource Kansas

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