Scandia residents help KU honors student research water issues

LAWRENCE -- Water management is a common denominator for a University of Kansas senior working on degrees in civil engineering and in American studies.

As an engineer, Jameson Reece Jones is interested in water management and control of resources. As a student of American studies, he is interested in "the way people view water, its uses and its control."

To explore his questions, Jones asked Scandia residents, many of whom have known him since he was a youngster visiting his grandparents there, to help him with his KU honors thesis: "Water Scarcity and Engineering Responsibility: A Whirlpool Perspective."

Jones grew up in Texas but spent summers visiting his maternal grandparents, H.W. and Marynell Reece, in Scandia, a farm community of about 400 residents in Republic County just south of Nebraska in central Kansas. Settled in 1868 by a group of Swedish immigrants, the town sits on the Republican River on land once governed by the Pawnee Republic of the Pawnee Nation.

Jones particularly remembers water skiing on Lovewell Reservoir in the adjoining Jewell County. The reservoir, constructed in 1957, provided water for both recreation and agriculture. Area farmers agreed to contract for construction of the reservoir, paying a regular fee for use of the water.

"In the last few years," Jones says, "some farmers lament signing into the reservoir. They are getting less water and being charged more for the dam." There also is concern that water will be diverted from rural areas to serve growing populations elsewhere in Kansas.

As he talked with his faculty adviser in American studies, Professor David Katzman, about a topic for a thesis, required of students in KU's Honors Program, Jones proposed preparing a case study comparing and contrasting perspectives of farmers, homeowners and civil engineers about water supplies.

Katzman notes that Jones' study brings together and integrates issues involving engineering, history, culture and policy.

"His premise is that water is a basic necessity for human life and he is trying to understand how American culture has dealt with problems of water," Katzman says. "Few [young scholars] have had the background and tools to integrate all these areas. This is something unique about Jameson."

Jones is finding that farmers, homeowners and engineers have different measurements of value and that not all can be quantified. "On each side of the issue, they think the other has the most control of the water and if they don't use it, the other will," Jones says.

The hope is that the farmers and engineers would find some common ground to reconcile that water could be monitored to preserve a rural community as well as to provide for growing populations in other parts of the state, Jones says.

Katzman adds, "He is trying to understand why we approach water policy as we have in the past and how our attitudes and tools are changing today's policy. His study will suggest ways to process these issues in the future -- not only for farmers and engineers in Scandia but in other communities in Kansas and other states."

Jones is completing his honors thesis and will graduate in December 2003. He is among a small percentage of KU engineering students who seek a second degree. At KU, he has been nominated for both a Rhodes and a Marshall scholarship. Jones plans a career in public policy focusing on water resources nationally and internationally. Following graduation, he will work in the office of U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) in Washington, D.C.

Jones is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Scott Jones and is an Edward Marcus High School graduate in Highland Village, Texas. His mother is a civil engineer and his father teaches theology.