More and more wells sit abandoned
Speaking of aquifers drying up…the Ogallala aquifer is one of them.
After decades of irrigation, the aquifer that makes life possible in dry western Kansas is reaching a critical point. Several counties have already lost more than half of their underground water. But a new plan could save more of what’s left.
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Fly over these dry plains and you won’t see many rushing rivers or glimmering lakes. You’ll see circles. Mile after mile of green geometric crop fields spun into the near-desert landscape by wells that tap water hidden beneath the surface and the center pivot irrigation sprayers splayed around them.
Which could make you think “Dang, human ingenuity, aren’t we clever.” Or it could make you think “Dang, I bet that water under the surface isn’t actually infinite.”
But across western Kansas, more and more wells sit abandoned as underground water levels drop and drop some more. Vast swaths of the region have seen more than half of their water disappear since the dawn of irrigation. Wallace County on the Colorado border has lost roughly 80%.
Story of the planet in miniature. Yes, it’s big, it’s huge, it’s massive, but it’s not infinite. If you treat it as infinite you will eventually bump up against its limits.
The subterranean reservoirs of the sprawling Ogallala aquifer make life possible here — from powering the multibillion-dollar agricultural economy to filling up cups at the kitchen sink.
But after decades of large-scale crop irrigation, that water is running out. And now farmers and state leaders struggle to agree on how to save the future of life in western Kansas without choking the livelihoods of the people who live here.
Good luck to them.
H/t iknklast
Of course, both are true. (Which was presumably your point.)
Aquifer water supply is essentially mining as the recharge is so heavily outpaced by consumption. Reminds me a little of our own issues with the Great Artesian Basin, but that has been heavily regulated for decades now.
You’d’ve hoped after the Dust Bowl fiasco people would’ve learned “do not farm in this giant desert in the middle of the country”, but nope, rain follows the well…
Most of what they grow is not native to where they are farming. If the crops were more in tune with the local climate then they wouldn’t have to pump so much water from the aquifer.
I was shocked to learn that the number one crop in Arizona is…..
cotton. Cotton is awrful thirsty crops. The water runs through canals in the desert (hello evaporation) to the irrigation locations.
Living in this middle of the country desolate wasteland of Trump-Central, it seems the only lesson they got is “we better use up all the groundwater before someone else gets it”. In fact, that is nearly exactly what T. Boone Pickens said in a talk I attended where he was explaining why he felt he was right to drain Ogallala Aquifer water to sell to east Texas – where they get a lot more water than west Texas – and use way more than the average for the country, which is already way too high.
Dang those blockquotes!
There’s cattle being raised in Arizona, too. Many of the hiking trails, such as around Black Canyon, and up on the Rim, are routed through grazing land. And I can’t quite figure what the cattle are grazing on, since the ground is hard as rock and the only things growing are cacti and scrub.