The Ogallala Aquifer may be depleted within 30 years

Evidence

Under the surface of the land, the water is also being pillaged. The Ogallala Aquifer is a cache of ancient freshwater that underlies most of the Great Plains region. The crush of industrialized agriculture in the 1970s is sucking the reservoir dry. Between 1959 and 1977, for instance, Nebraska farmers increased the amount of acreage under irrigation by sevenfold, to seven million acres. By 1975, farmers in the region pumped more than 27 billion gallons a day from the Ogallala Aquifer. Drawdown rates today continue to drop the aquifer level by four feet per year. The recharge of this aquifer is estimated to be one-half inch a year. Today, 20 percent of nationally irrigated cropland is serviced by the Ogallala, but hydrologists suggest it will be depleted within 30 years. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 738

Categorization

• XREF: Aquifer drawdown (four feet/year vs half-inch recharge) is the same nonrenewable extraction thread as ch2’s hydro-corruption and the drawdown theme in Reading the Landscape; a bison-managed prairie needs none of this.