David Pope grew up on a farm in Oklahoma and attended Oklahoma State University where he received his bachelor's and Master's degrees in Agricultural Engineering. Pope began his professional career as an Extension Irrigation Engineer in the Cooperative Extension Service at Kansas State University. He then served as Manager of Groundwater Management District No. 3 in Garden City before moving to Topeka. Pope served as Assistant Chief Engineer and Chief Engineer-Director, in the Division of Water Resources of the Kansas Department of Agriculture. In those roles, he was responsible for execution of state laws governing the conservation, management, use, and control of water and watercourses. Pope advised governors, legislative committees, and individual legislators on water policy and related natural resource issues. He also represented Kansas on interstate entities charged with water-related matters that cross state boundaries. As such, he provided leadership in efforts to protect the state's interest in interstate rivers and aquifer systems and worked to resolve disputes with other states when they occurred. During his tenure as Chief Engineer, Pope provided technical support during litigation to enforce interstate water compacts and was called as an expert witness on several occasions.

In this 2019 oral history interview, David Pope describes how the awareness of declining water levels in the High Plains Aquifers in Kansas led to efforts to support wise use and responsible management of groundwater in the state. He describes being hired to address groundwater issues from the local perspective and how he was involved in the creation the Groundwater Management District (GMD) in southwest Kansas. As Assistant Chief Engineer of the Department of Agriculture’s Division of Water Resources and later Chief Engineer, Pope was involved in a state policy limiting new groundwater development, referred to as planned depletion, along with efforts to develop regulations on water management to replace the prior ad hoc approach. Pope discusses his dealings the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in assuring minimal desirable streamflow to satisfy municipal and industrial water users along with conservation and recreation interests. He describes the complex interplay of surface and groundwater use policies which became a politically highly charged issue in addressing the Cheyenne Bottoms wetlands issue, Pope explains how the water law premise of "first in time, first in right" has been modified with amendments and regulations that require the filing of water rights, development of conservation plans to assure the beneficial use of water, mandatory metering of water use, and closure of areas for new water rights, all based on hydrologic studies. He concludes that although some GMDs have not tackled long-term depletion problems in western Kansas, two districts have adopted successful strategies: safe yield rules adopted by Groundwater Management District No. 2, and the creation of the Local Enhanced Management Area (LEMA) in Sheridan County to regulate irrigation. Pope describes those successes and speculates on why others have not been as successful.