Why America’s Groundwater Is Disappearing | WSJ

- [Narrator] Unchecked Groundwater use is draining aquifers across the country, threatening drinking water and the nation status as a food superpower. - Corn is the highest water using crop there is out here. I don't think the farm could sustain it. - [Narrator] A wealth of underground water helped transform the dusty Sandhills of Kansas into bountiful farmland. But now that water is disappearing. - I would say it's an existential threat. - [Narrator] Here's why time is running out for parts of this critical Aquifer and what it reveals about the larger Groundwater crisis unfolding across the country. Garden City Kansas wind 30 miles per hour. Several times a year, Brownie Wilson travels across Western Kansas to measure wells and track the rapid decline of the Ogallala Aquifer, the largest underground store of freshwater in the United States. - This is what we call an index well in that it records the water levels on an hourly basis. - [Narrator] Since Wilson started working at the Kansas Geological Survey more than 20 years ago, many of the wells have declined by more than 100 feet. - So this well has dropped about 150 feet since the 1950s. - [Narrator] The Ogallala Aquifer is the lifeblood of one of the world's most abundant farming communities, stretching from Kansas to Eastern Colorado and the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. Today it supports about 30% of all US crop and animal production. But in 2019, parts of the Aquifer reached their lowest levels since the US Geological Survey started measuring more than seven decades ago. The once abundant water allowed farms like this one to grow cheap cattle feed from alfalfa and corn. It fueled the feedlots and dairy farms that now dot the landscape of Southwest Kansas. - There would be no garden city if it wasn't for the beef industry. - [Narrator] Gina and her brother Mark Gigot are farmers trying to preserve the water below their land. For decades, their family has used groundwater to grow corn and other types of row crops. The 9,000 acre farm has historically been one of Kansas' largest water users. - The only thing that Southwest Kansas has is agriculture. And without agriculture, this is gonna be a total ghost town in full tumbleweeds weeds. - [Narrator] Irrigation can more than double the amount of corn grown per acre, but it comes at a cost requiring farmers to drain the Aquifer. Scarce rainfall in the region isn't enough to sustain industrial scale agriculture. - About 90% of the water that's used in our state comes from a ground water supply, and 80 to 85% of that is used for irrigation. And so there are certain areas where we have lost 50, 60, 70% of what the Aquifer was there going back to the 1940s or 1950s. - [Narrator] That water could take centuries or millennia to replenish, meaning regions like West Kansas risk losing access to those reserves in the future when they might need it even more. A lifetime map of the Ogallala Aquifer in Kansas reveals just how dire the situation is. - There are some areas in West Central Kansas where the water table has been drawn down so much that it no longer can support irrigated agriculture. - [Narrator] As farms use up the groundwater, corn yields have declined in some areas like in Kansas Wichita County. In 2023, US Corn Growers produced an average of 173 bushels per acre. But in Wichita, the yield was less than half of that. Part of a decades long decline. To extend the life of the Aquifer, the Gigot's have switched to less water intensive crops like Triticale and Forage sorghum. To supplement their income, they've also planted fields for cattle grazing. - We knew at that point in time that we had to make a major change within our industry and it all surrounded around water. - [Narrator] They've used irrigation more strategically too. Soil moisture probes show them the water content of the soil so they irrigate only when the soil needs it. All of these measures allowed them to cut their water use by about 26% over the last seven years. But some hydrology experts say it will take even more drastic measures to save the Aquifer. - Estimates of what would it take to slow down these groundwater declines are ranging from 20 to 30 to 40 some places 50% reduction in what is used each year. - [Narrator] Policy experts say groundwater regulation is key to reaching those targets. - Groundwater laws across the country are really more of a patchwork. They're not consistent from one state to another. - [Narrator] Burke Griggs is a law professor at Washburn University specializing in water law and policy. - If you own land above an Aquifer, then you're entitled as a matter of owning that land to use a reasonable amount of groundwater. - [Narrator] Throughout most of the country, groundwater has been treated as an unlimited natural resource. Federal law plays almost no role in regulating it, and many state laws allow landowners to pump large amounts of groundwater for relatively low cost. - Starting in the 1940s, states issued more water rights than there was water to supply. The states have not corrected the imbalance between the number of water rights out there in the amount of water that's needed to supply them. - [Narrator] To address the problem, Kansas has implemented new systems that encourage landowners to make voluntary water cuts. In some areas it worked. - In Northwestern Kansas, the irrigators have used new groundwater laws and policies to really reduce the rate of depletion of the Aquifer. But in southwestern Kansas irrigators and farm and ranch owners have not used these tools. - [Narrator] There is still resistance to change throughout agricultural communities in the US. - There is a a lot of farmers that believe this is their water and they're gonna use it. It's allocated to them, they're gonna use it and they're gonna pump it till someone tells 'em different. - [Narrator] And it's not just an agriculture problem. Groundwater is also being drained for cities, industrial use and new housing developments like in Arizona. - Arizona is limiting new construction around Phoenix as the state's water supply continues to dwindle. - [Narrator] A 2024 study revealed more than half of the Aquifers in the US have lost water over the last two decades. In parts of Utah, California, Florida, and Arizona, so much water is being pumped up. It's causing roads to buckle, land to sink and fissures to open in the earth. - California has issues where the so much water has been extracted, it's actually dropping by tens of feet in terms of the water got removed and then the ground is starting to sink down. - [Narrator] Over pumping can also contaminate drinking water supplies like on Long Island in New York. Salt water is encroaching on parts of the Aquifer that provide drinking water for over 3 million people. Despite the mounting challenges, hydrology experts say there's still time to save these critical natural resources. - There's a window of opportunity here for us to get this Aquifer onto a more sustainable path, not sustainability, but on a more sustainable path. And the key there is to reduce pumping. - [Narrator] Throughout the country, more and more cities are expanding wastewater recycling programs, turning city sewage directly into drinkable water. This strategy can be used in agriculture too. - So people are waking up to the public reality that groundwater is a public resource. And we have seen political initiatives across the West that show that groundwater is not going to be the domain of the agricultural fiefdoms. That cities like Denver and Kansas City and Albuquerque and Phoenix are just as concerned about the groundwater problem as the farmers who use the bulk of the water supplies. (ominous music)

Channel: The Wall Street Journal

Views: 302,301

Keywords: groundwater, Ogallala Aquifer, aquifer, ogallala aquifer depletion, farming, irrigation, agriculture, environment, ogallala, texas high plains, water conservation, water scarcity, great plains, superpower, food superpower, corn, draining aquifer, drinking water supply, natural resources, kansas groundwater, us farming, us crops, colorado, oklahoma, texas, dairy farms, groundwater supply, water table, irrigated agriculture, corn yields, soil moisture, arizona water, overpumping, usnews

Id: DdNtraY6HhQ

Length: 7min 35sec (455 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2024