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Groundwater Exploitation in the High Plains (Paperback)
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Groundwater Exploitation in the High Plains (Paperback)
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The High Plains region was once called the Great American Desert
and thought to be, in the words of explorer Stephen Long, "wholly
unfit for cultivation." Now we know that beneath the surface,
unbeknownst to the explorers and early settlers, lies the Ogallala
aquifer, an underground formation that stretches for 800 miles from
the Texas panhandle to South Dakota. It holds more water than Lake
Huron. Indeed, the Ogallala has been referred to as the sixth Great
Lake. It is the water pumped for irrigation from the Ogallala that
has enabled a naturally dry region to produce up to 40 percent of
America's beef and 20 to 25 percent of its food and fiber, an
output worth about $20 billion. In the forty years since the
invention of center pivot irrigation, the High Plains aquifer
system has been depleted at an astonishing rate. In 1978 the volume
of water pumped from the aquifer exceeded the annual flow of the
Colorado River. In Texas, water levels are down 200 feet in some
areas. In Kansas, 700 miles of rivers that once flowed year round
no longer flow at all. In short, the High Plains may be becoming
the desert it was once thought to be. Is it too late to solve the
problem? Geographers David Kromm and Stephen White assembled nine
of the most knowledgeable scholars and water professionals in the
Great Plains to help answer that question. The result is a
collection of essays that insightfully examine the dilemmas of
groundwater use. From a variety of perspectives they address both
the technical problems and the politics of water management to
provide a badly needed analysis of the implications of large-scale
irrigation. They have included three case studies: the Nebraska
Sand Hills, Northwestern Kansas, and West Texas. Kromm and White
provide an introduction and conclusion to the volume.
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