The Ogallala Aquifer has a visibility problem.
It’s easy to see when drought, farm irrigation and city taps drain the great reservoirs of the Southwest. Bathtub rings paint the red rock walls surrounding Lake Powell as it shrinks, sounding alarm bells loud and clear.
What about a body of water that’s locked away in a subterranean labyrinth of gravel and rock reaching more than 300 feet underground?
The Ogallala may hold as much water as Lake Huron, but we can’t see it. And, problematically, that means we can’t see it disappear.
That hasn’t stopped people like Brownie Wilson from trying to bring the aquifer’s decline into focus. He’s one of the Kansas Geological Survey crew members who fan out across western and central Kansas every year to check hundreds of water wells that tap into the Ogallala.
In Wallace County along the Colorado border, Wilson hikes into a crop field toting a giant spool of measuring tape like it’s a piece of carry-on luggage. He feeds the steel tape down a pipe where it snakes hundreds of feet until it strikes water.
This county has already lost more than 80% of the water in its corner of the aquifer — the highest percentage loss in the state. In some parts of Wallace County, aquifer levels fell seven feet in just the past year. That’s seven feet closer to running dry.
Statewide water levels fell by an average of nearly two feet this year — the third-largest decline since the 1990s — as extreme drought pushed farmers to irrigate crops more than usual.
If the water keeps running out, some of the region’s farms and towns could vanish within a generation or two.
“We’ve still got time in a lot of places,” Wilson said. “In other places, that future is now.”
This county has already lost more than 80% of the water in its corner of the aquifer — the highest percentage loss in the state. In some parts of Wallace County, aquifer levels fell seven feet in just the past year. That’s seven feet closer to running dry.
Statewide water levels fell by an average of nearly two feet this year — the third-largest decline since the 1990s — as extreme drought pushed farmers to irrigate crops more than usual.
If the water keeps running out, some of the region’s farms and towns could vanish within a generation or two.
“We’ve still got time in a lot of places,” Wilson said. “In other places, that future is now.”
Screenshot 2023-03-27 at 11-10-16 PowerPoint Presentation - provisional_2023_wl_results-1.pdf.png Kansas Geological Survey / This map from the Kansas Geological Survey shows how much the aquifer declined in the past year, based on provisional data. Areas shaded orange saw their water levels drop by more than five feet in one year. Many western Kansas farmers have cut back on how much they irrigate their crops — voluntarily. Others have been forced to adapt as their wells run dry. But after decades of mostly inaction from Kansas leaders, a new push to support water conservation at the Statehouse signals that the state may finally be shifting toward a more committed, perhaps even mandatory, approach to saving the Ogallala.
But preserving the aquifer is a tricky balance in these parts. Irrigated farming pays the bills. Rural economies and communities depend on it.
Irrigation also consumes the largest share of the aquifer’s water — by far. Nearly all (94%) of the water used in Wallace County’s regional groundwater management district, GMD 1, goes to irrigate crops. Statewide, the amount of water pumped from underground and sprayed onto crops averages out to more than 2 billion gallons per day.
“When you're talking about groundwater declines, there’s only two ways to fix it,” Wilson said. “You gotta put more water in or you quit taking more out.”
But only a tiny fraction of this region’s meager rainfall ends up refilling the aquifer. In fact, the Kansas Geological Survey estimates that this district’s portion of the aquifer gets used up at nine times the rate that it’s replenished by precipitation.
Source: kcur.org
Photo Credit: GettyImages-Songbird839
Categories: Kansas, Crops