To the Last Drop : National Geographic Magazine

With stunning pictures, the National Geographic featured in its August 2016 issue an article about the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer. The Ogallala, which spans from South Dakota to Texas, has collected water within porous rock, according to the article, for about 15,000 years. Pumping the water of the aquifer has exceeded recharge, the rain and snow that replenish it.  Water from the aquifer supplies the agricultural industry that farms the land above the aquifer.


Satellite imagery that has recorded changes to the largest 37 aquifers worldwide documents the decline in water resources. "The consequences will be huge," says Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and lead researcher on a study using satellites to record changes in the world's 37 largest aquifers. "We need to sustain groundwater to sustain food production, and we're not doing it" (p. 94).


Agriculture that profits from Ogallala generates $20 billion annually, providing "nearly one-fifth of the United States' wheat, corn, and beef cattle." (p. 93) However, farmers realize, with varying degrees of urgency, that they face 'using the water to extinction.' The author, Laura Parker, traveled the length of the aquifer to gage its health. In Kansas, Brownie Wilson, the water-data manager for the Kansas Geological Survey, measures annually the aquifer's depletion. Within Kansas, that has resulted in the equivalent of a 1 percent decline per year over a period of 60 years. Kansas occupies two-thirds of the aquifer's total territory. In Greeley, Colorado, the Mai Farm, owned by a German family that migrated to the area prior to the Dust Bowl, has ceased any irrigation farm for 16 years; they rely on dryland farming, growing winter wheat for a flour producer. Nebraska has plenty of water. Texas, in contrast, with 88,000 wells near Lubbock--73,000 of them still in use--face depletion.


As expected, the hydrology of the area, the laws regulating the use of water, the political climate, and the farming practices and traditions, determine water use and sustainability. Prior appropriation states, such as Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and others, view water as a public resource. The state legally grants water rights as property to those who put the water to beneficial use, allocating an amount that the use requires. Laura Parker explained that Texas law operates differently. "Ground water is not publicly owned; Texans can pump as much as they can use from beneath their land." Consequently, some wells have dried up and farmers have resorted to leasing wind rights to energy companies to accumulate income. Wind turbines dot the landscape.


Parker predicted, "Parts of the Ogallala could endure for a century or more. But the aquifer's heart is at greatest risk of depletion. This overstressed zone runs the width of the Texas Panhandle north 450 miles, from Lubbock to the Kansas-Nebraska state line. There, transition to a new era of permanent depletion is under way" (p. 95).


To read Parker's assessment of other aquifers worldwide, go to http://www.ngm.comAug2016