How has the United States government actually helped in increasing the amount of water that has been withdrawn from the Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains? And why is this bad for the environment?
The Ogallala aquifer is an area in the High Plains area of the United States that underlies the surface, holding and storing water that, if utilized by the construction of wells and pumps, can be used for irrigation purposes, as well as for drinking, for livestock, mining and industry. The reason that this area of the High Plains is able to store so much water underground is because of the deposits that were formed there in the distant past, at a time when streams and rivers flowed eastward out of the Rocky Mountains. Because of the nature of the deposits, comprised of clay, silt, sand, and gravel, it allows for a unique storage capacity not found in such large amounts elsewhere – it can store as much water as found in Lake Huron. As for the area it covers, estimates range from 174,000 to 225,000 square miles, comprising most of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, western Kansas, most of Nebraska, as well as parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota. The water from this underground aquifer has allowed for the Great Plains to become the breadbasket of the United States, and one of the major breadbaskets of the world, allowing the area to grow large amounts of wheat, corn, and cotton, as well as plenty of grazing lands for cattle.
Local water districts and state governments within the region where the Ogallala aquifer exists usually have policies in place that allows for controlled use of water from the aquifer, unfortunately, the policies don’t allow for sustainable usage of the water, that is, making sure that the consumption of the aquifer’s water is limited to its recharge rate; instead, it only allows for an orderly and planned depletion of the water from the aquifer. This means that the usage rate is higher than the aquifer’s recharge rate, that is, the rate that it replenishes its water. This then means that the amount of water in the Ogallala aquifer is slowly being depleted. Since state governments and local water districts are allowing for more water to be used than the recharge rate, and since the federal government has put these governments and water districts in charge of water usage, it could then be argued that the federal government, through this action, has helped to assist in the increasing withdrawals of water from the Ogallala aquifer.
Another way that the federal government has actually assisted in increasing the withdrawal of water from the Ogallala aquifer is through the installation of 30 or more wells, to be used in an extensive land-use study, in order to determine the quality of water coming from the well, which derives its water from the aquifer. This includes the intensively-studied NAWQA program that lasted 8 or 9 years, as part of the USGS’s (United States Geological Survey) desire to learn about usage as well as water quality. This type of study actually requires the using of those wells in order for the study to be effective – meaning the federal government has helped to increase Ogallala aquifer water withdrawals.
Besides the two aforementioned means that the federal government has actually helped to increase water withdrawals from this aquifer, there is also another, that is perhaps that largest effort that the federal government has made. And, it wasn’t made recently, but back during the days of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the New Deal era. Initially, the government tried to get farmers to move elsewhere, but, when that failed, they tried a different tactic – they helped to develop and utilize new irrigation technologies of the time, including new pump technologies, and well as center-pivot irrigation delivery systems, to help make the High Plains a highly productive agricultural area, as well as protect the farmers from drought and harsh winds.
Can our federal government turn around and actually change policies that will allow for water usage that comes from the Ogallala aquifer to be sustainable – that is, for the actual usage of this water to be equal to, or less than, the rate that the water gets replaced in the aquifer? Perhaps it can, but there are some barriers that are in the way that would need to be dealt with first, such as the fact that if we immediately cut off usage the next growing season, our nation would be short of some of its food supply, as well as much of its feed supply used to feed cattle on feedlots. We would first need to move some of our farming to other location, perhaps back east, restarting agricultural practices in places that have long since grown over back into woodlots as farming moved farther west in the past. Only after we reestablish other places as suppliers of our food needs can we then reduce the amount of irrigation used in the High Plains. Or we could establish a system where crops like wheat, corn, cotton, and sorghum are only grown every two to four years, depending on how long it takes the aquifer to replenish itself. You could also take a look at a proposal to help solve the water shortage problems in the Great Plains by clicking here. It seems we have some work cut out for ourselves when it comes to fixing our overuse of the water from the Ogallala Aquifer, and getting our government to help the situation rather than making it worse.
