Students Forced to Pee Outside as Schools Run Out of Water

Exceptional drought is forcing one Kansas school district to take extreme measures to preserve water.

Kansas is battling exceptional drought in 1.65 percent of the state, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor Map—the most severe drought classification by the U.S. Geological Survey. The worst of Kansas' drought is in the southern region, primarily in Elk, Montgomery and Chautauqua counties.

The drought is currently so severe that Caney Valley Schools in Montgomery County are installing trailer restrooms for students to use to cut down on water usage, Fox 23 News reported.

Requesting that students use the outdoor restrooms is only one of the major changes the school district faces. The district also is encouraging the use of hand sanitizer over hand washing, turning off school showers and implementing portable toilets at athletic events. Water fountains at the high school have been turned off, and students were provided with bottled water, superintendent Blake Vargas told the news station.

Vargas said that the district will move to a four-day school week starting next week to assist in preserving water, as the high school is the largest consumer of water in Caney, Kansas.

"We have some of our operations that require water, our water source heat pumps that we utilize at the elementary is based off of that and so there's going to be natural consumption, and so by cutting that usage along with other operations that we're able to cut, we're able to reduce 20 percent by reducing a day out of our operations," Vargas told Fox 23.

Newsweek reached out to Vargas via email for comment.

The changes will likely further cut down on the school district's water usage, but what the region really needs is rain. The U.S. Drought Monitor Map depicted that none of Montgomery County is free from drought.

Nearly 15 percent of the county is battling exceptional drought, and nearly 59 percent of the county is battling extreme drought. The drought has remained persistent in the area, as the entirety of the county has struggled with drought for more than a year.

However, Kansas is forecast to receive some much-needed rain soon. AccuWeather senior meteorologist Dale Mohler told Newsweek that conditions are favorable for precipitation in southeastern Kansas in the coming weeks.

"Over the next two weeks, the pattern is very favorable for rain, especially southeast Kansas and into central Kansas," Mohler said. "I think they're going to get some help."

It will take several months of wet weather to reverse the long-lasting effects of the drought in Kansas, though. The drought could be aided by the El Niño climate pattern, which is anticipated to bring wet weather to the southern and southwest United States,

El Niño is a climate pattern that starts with warm water building up in the tropical Pacific Ocean west of South America. El Niño, which occurs every three to seven years, typically results in high precipitation for the southern part of the U.S., including California. The drought in Kansas began during the La Niña climate pattern last year.

Earlier this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shared a graphic that forecasted the incoming winter weather outlook. Much of Kansas was forecast to have warmer-than-average temperatures throughout the winter. Persistent wet weather was forecast further south in Texas, southern California and Arizona.