An Eye-opening series .....
The scope of this mounting crisis is difficult to overstate: The High Plains of Texas are swiftly running out of groundwater supplied by one of the world’s largest aquifers – the Ogallala.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/last-drop-americas-breadbasket-faces-dire-water-crisis-n146836
Heartland Water Crisis: Why the
Planet Depends on These Kansas Farmers
BY BRIAN BROWN
This story is one in a series on a crisis in America's Breadbasket—the
depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer and its effects on a region that helps feed
the world. Read the previous installment here.
MANHATTAN, Kansas—In America’s Breadbasket, a
battle of ideas is underway on the most fundamental topics of all: food, water,
and the future of the planet.
Last August, in a still-echoing blockbuster study,
Dave Steward, Ph.D., and his colleagues at Kansas State University, informed the
$15 billion Kansas agricultural economy that it was on a fast track to oblivion.
The reason: The precipitous, calamitous withdrawal rates of the Ogallala
Aquifer.
The Ogallala is little known outside this part of
the world, but it’s the primary source of irrigation not just for all of western
Kansas, but the entire Great Plains. This gigantic, soaked subterranean sponge –
fossil water created 10 million years ago – touches eight states, stretching
from Texas all the way up to South Dakota, across 111.8 million acres and
175,000 square miles......
As the Ogallala is being drained, attention in the
High Plains is turning to corn, the crop that’s highest in demand, fetches the
highest price and is increasingly controversial......Corn is a thirsty crop, and some question the
inherent morality of using so much land and water to raise it, especially
because so little of the corn grown in the U.S. is served as food. It’s either
fed to cattle, or made into ethanol. Since 1980, it is estimated the U.S.
government has spent $45 billion to subsidize ethanol production.
