And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1999 20:59:19 -0500 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Future of Ogallala depends on conservation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" http://cjonline.com/stories/101199/kan_ogallala11.shtml Future of Ogallala depends on conservation Just because it is there isn't reason to drain aquifer, one farmer notes. By CHERYL WITTENAUER The Associated Press SHARON SPRINGS -- William Mai settled in Wallace County during the Dust Bowl. In 1948, he drilled the first irrigation well in the region. Discouraged by irregular cycles of rain, the small-time farmer next door to Colorado wanted the land to produce enough to feed his family and a handful of cows. Neighbors, impressed by his results, began drilling their own wells in the Ogallala Aquifer, especially during the parched years of the mid-1950s. Early, modest wells like Mai's foretold what would become a near explosion of irrigation in western Kansas that took off in the 1950s. Now Mai's son, 63-year-old Bill Mai, who farms 2,000 acres on the land where his parents settled in the '30s, says it's time to stop extracting the precious resource. Next planting season, he will switch to dryland farming, raising corn and wheat without the benefit of irrigation. He'll compensate by leaving land fallow some seasons to maximize use of soil moisture. Irrigation, far and away above all other uses, places the biggest demand on the aquifer in western Kansas. "Sure, we can pump it, who's to stop us?" Mai asked. "But is it the right thing to do, particularly if we don't need it? If we can produce crops without it, it doesn't seem like a smart thing to do." Experts say the future of the Ogallala and the economies that sprang from it depend on conservation and careful planning to slow the rate of depletion. Continued tapping of the aquifer presents perhaps the biggest natural resources challenge for Kansas in the next century. The Ogallala Aquifer won't last forever, especially with the arrival of large hog and dairy operations in western Kansas, said David Kromm, a professor of geography at Kansas State University who has been researching the Ogallala for 20 years. Bill Mai started his experiment with 100 acres of dryland corn in 1984, gradually adding acres until he was confident it would work. He had worried about the aquifer's depletion, evidenced by a rapid decline in the rate of water flowing from his father's well. The flow rate dropped from 1,000 gallons a minute in the 1950s to 300 gallons a minute more recently. The younger Mai also wondered why he couldn't duplicate what agricultural records showed Wallace County farmers were doing a century ago, growing non-irrigated corn as the primary crop. But it was a more nagging moral question that persuaded him to switch to dryland farming. Did he have the right to take water from future generations? For now, his willingness to return the land to dryland farming might be the exception. But he could prove to be as much a prophet of things to come as his father was 50 years ago. Kansans weren't always so conservation-minded. While much of the Ogallala in Kansas is off limits to new appropriation, at one time the state encouraged well development because it was thought that groundwater reserves were limitless. In fact, the aquifer is not recharged except in a few areas such as the Nebraska Sandhills and the sand-sage prairie of southwestern Kansas, Kromm said. So, water that is "mined" from the aquifer is gone forever. The Ogallala, an underground cache of water-saturated sands and gravels, was formed 10 million years ago by deposits from the Rocky Mountains. It underlies parts of eight High Plains states from South Dakota to West Texas -- including fingers reaching into the western third of Kansas. The aquifer's depth or "saturated thickness" varies greatly throughout its expanse. In some places in Nebraska, which has the largest aquifer reserves, the depth is 1,300 feet. In Kansas, the range is several hundred feet to less than 100. Western Kansas farmers began irrigating in the late 1800s by diverting surface water from the Arkansas River. After the turn of the century, they began tapping groundwater. The emergence of turbine-engine pumps in the 1940s powered by abundant reserves in the Hugoton natural gas field allowed water to be lifted easily and economically. Large-scale tapping of the aquifer escalated in the 1950s, transforming western Kansas from an arid semi-desert to a verdant and productive land. In southwestern Kansas, which has the state's richest reserves of the Ogallala and the most to lose from its steady depletion, irrigation produces corn. That has led to a proliferation of cattle feed lots, a myriad meatpacking plants and associated businesses. The region also has had an influx of large dairies that pulled out of California and Arizona for western Kansas's open range and mild climate. Associated businesses in the future could include milk- and cheese-processing businesses. The robust economy and dramatic population growth in places such as Garden City make southwest Kansas "one of the most dynamic areas in North America," and it's all because of irrigation from the Ogallala, Kromm said. "The viability of southwest Kansas is dependent on irrigation," said state Sen. Steve Morris, a Hugoton farmer who chairs the state Senate Agriculture Committee. But how long will the water last? Some areas already are closed to new well development. Others may be tapped in 10 years. Still others, more than 100 years. "There are huge questions out there," said water historian James Sherow, associate professor of history at Kansas State University. "The farmers I talk to are nervous. They don't know if their grandkids will follow the same line of work." Traditionally low prices for natural gas have kept the well pumps whirring. But as Hugoton natural gas field reserves diminish, farmers may find it no longer economically feasible to continue irrigating. "When the water table drops, it costs you that much more (in energy costs) to pump," said state Sen. Tim Huelskamp, a southwest Kansas farmer and irrigator. "In the long term, economics will determine how much water is pumped." Reducing the rate of depletion of the Ogallala and other groundwater reserves in western Kansas is one of the Kansas Water Authority's goals for 2010. "First we want to see what the rate of decline has been and where it will be if (current practices) continue," said Darrel Eklund, environmental scientist with the Kansas Water Office. "If we have 10 feet of saturated thickness and it's declining a foot a year, we have a problem. If it's 500 feet and declining, it's not as urgent." Before conservation was the norm in western Kansas, the water table of the Ogallala below intensely irrigated areas was dropping 3 to 6 feet a year. A public outcry about such water losses led the Kansas Legislature in 1972 to enact a law creating five groundwater management districts. Three districts in the west and two in south-central Kansas cover 30 percent of the land mass in Kansas and 85 percent of the state's groundwater resources, said Wayne Bossert, manager of the Colby-based Northwest Kansas Groundwater Management District No. 4. The district will not allow any new water right that would deplete more than what is naturally recharged. Like cities and counties, the districts are political entities that adopt, enact and enforce ordinances that have the force and effect of law. Besides regulating water use, the districts manage the resource by educating and consulting with water users. In short, the districts develop strategies that maximize use of the water for the greatest number of people, for the greatest length of time, for the greatest economic output as possible, said Steven Frost, executive director of Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District in Garden City. "We're all in this bathtub together, and we're so much affected by the straws in the tub," Frost said. The challenge of extending the life of Kansas's groundwater resources has produced some innovations. The Western Kansas Groundwater Management District in Scott City is in its 25th year of a multi-county cloud-seeding project that has been shown to produce rain and reduce formation of crop-damaging hail. The Equus Beds Groundwater Management District in Halstead, northwest of Wichita, is a partner in a multimillion-dollar demonstration project that has captured 600 million gallons of water from the Little Arkansas River and its banks for recharge into the Equus Beds Aquifer. The goal is to capture up to 100 billion gallons that otherwise would flow into the Gulf of Mexico. The district also concerns itself with water quality, said Manager Mike Dealy, who worries that a new Kansas law allowing leaks of an eighth to a quarter-inch of seepage a day from hog-operation waste lagoons will contaminate the fragile Equus Beds. All of the districts place limits on new water permits where the aquifer has been over appropriated, and several encourage conservation by incentives. The Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District, with the state's largest reserve of the Ogallala and the most intensive demands on it with 10,000 large-capacity wells, calls its water-use strategy, "Water for the 21st Century." Frost, the director, said the district tries to balance competing missions of conserving the aquifer and keeping the region from deteriorating economically. The district has a well-spacing policy to protect users from each other, investigates waste-of-water complaints, and requires meters, like speedometers, as a reminder to users. Frost said the district also is promoting what he calls "conservation by economics," helping people realize they can make or save money by saving water. "Look at the aquifer as a bank account," Frost says, "with lots of checks written and very few deposits into the account." Frost said the district also is trying to come up with better, less intense uses of water that produce a higher economic value. That includes recruiting industries with lower water demands. "We're at a crossroads, but I'm optimistic about the future," Frost said. "We still have a lot of water here, and technology is keeping ahead of us." For its part, the Kansas Water Authority wants to increase the number of water systems that meter their customers so that pipe leaks can be discovered before too much water is lost. The Authority encourages water systems to adopt and live by conservation plans, and wants to reduce the number of wells that pump more than the regional standard. It says it will pursue offenders who consistently pump more than what's authorized by their water right. In Kansas, other answers may be found in research into dryland farming and water-conserving irrigation technologies. A form of irrigation pioneered in Israel that is in its infancy in western Kansas cuts water use by as much as half that of conventional methods. Freddie Lamm, an irrigation researcher at Kansas State University, said finding ways of conserving water is not only the concern of irrigators. "Society has a long-term interest in conserving water in Kansas," he said. "We all need to take a part in helping individual farmers to conserve through incentives. "Water not used today potentially could have a greater value tomorrow." Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
