Gerald Spangler needs
no statistics or charts to tell him what he already knows: We are
running out of water.
Spangler is a semi-retired farmer
who has lived in southwest Nebraska, 15 miles east of the Colorado
border, since the Dust Bowl days. In 1 979, he drilled his first
groundwater well to a depth of 240 feet. Three years ago, the
driller had to go down 380 feet at the same site before finding
groundwater for domestic use.
That’s a 1 40-foot drop in
25 years, and “It’s kind of scary,” Spangler admits. Spangler’s
farm is the epitome of an increasingly alarming development across
the entire country, particularly the Great Plains and West. A
recent National Ground Water Association survey received responses
from 43 states nationwide, and all reported water shortages and
anticipated more of the same in the future.
Dire straits
in Las Vegas, Denver, Phoenix, Houston and other locales are well
documented, as is the unsettling state of affairs with the
over-appropriated Colorado River. A shortage of available water may
also do something nobody ever thought possible: Halt the relentless
development up and down the Colorado Rockies’ east slopes.
Multi-year drought conditions over much of the nation’s
heartland and decreased mountain snowmelt in the West — both
likely exacerbated by climate change and both likely to worsen,
climatologists say — have heightened awareness. But clearly, most
of the fault for the current dilemma lies with ourselves. Our
voracious appetite for water and the development that requires that
water are pushing nature to the brink.
The Ogallala
Aquifer, which covers 175,000 square miles and underlies eight
states in places, has experienced dramatic declines of well over
100 feet in some locations since large-scale irrigation began in
the 1 950s. The USGS notes that the aquifer has been depleted by 9
percent since the advent of groundwater irrigation. That doesn’t
sound like much of a problem, but consider this: A 2001 Kansas
State University study warned that only 15 percent of this vast
underground ocean is physically and economically feasible to pump
to the surface.
Aboveground, the defining waterways of
the Plains and West — the Platte, the Arkansas and the Colorado —
are shells of their former selves after a century of surface
diversions and groundwater pumping. Indeed, the headwaters of the
Arkansas River near Leadville, Colo. often give out before they get
to Dodge City, Kan., 450 miles downstream from Leadville.
If anything is benefiting from all these miscalculations and water
grabs, it is our legal system. It took more than two decades of
court dates for Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado to reach their
recent agreement on flows of the Platte River. Texas and New Mexico
have wrangled for years over Pecos River water, and the Klamath’s
water tension in the Northwest has made newspaper headlines for
decades.
To complicate matters, the Midwest’s misguided
fixation on creating ethanol from water-consuming corn is further
endangering our precious groundwater reservoirs. Research shows
that it takes 2,000 or more gallons of irrigated water to produce
one bushel of corn. Amazingly, after just one year of operation, a
single ethanol plant in Granite Falls, Minn., reduced that area’s
aquifer level by 90 feet.
The days of blank checks for
water appropriations and water rights will soon pass into history.
We can no longer use our groundwater and surface water as we
please, nor for as long as we please. If we wish to avoid a future
of water tribulations, we will need to adopt a Depression-era
mentality: Recycle and reuse, and most of all, conserve. We will
also need to finally consider water as both a public trust and a
“commons,” and use it accordingly. That will necessitate a painful
change of priorities, one that gives recreation and ecosystem
preservation seats at the table with municipalities, agriculture
and industry.
If we fail to take action, scenarios now
playing out in rural and urban areas of the Great Plains westward
will become much more common. The phrase “Dust Bowl” is freely
tossed about these days, although most refuse to believe it could
ever happen again. We should not be so arrogant. Gerald Spangler,
for one, will tell you he doesn’t want to find out what happens if
nature’s limits are pushed too hard.
“Human judges can
show mercy,” visionary Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, “but against
the laws of nature, there is no appeal.”
Pete
Letheby is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). He is a journalist and
free–lance writer in Grand Island,
Nebraska.
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