The West’s Unprecedented Water Crisis Is Worsening - The Atlantichttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/kansas-aquifer-ogallala-water-crisis-drought/621007/It is no secret that one of the worst droughts in 1,000 years is intensifying heat waves and megafires; that historic drops in surface-water levels coincide with historic spikes in demand as the region grows hotter, drier, and more populated; or that conflicts are escalating over who gets to use how much of what remains. Acute scarcity drives the search for water underground. But the West’s major aquifers are in trouble, too.
Aquifers are essential resources for human survival. Groundwater provides the only source of drinking water for one-third of the world’s people and supports nearly half of the planet’s irrigated agriculture. Yet far more groundwater is being pumped out than can be naturally replenished. Most dry-area aquifers are vanishing. These include the two primary groundwater systems in the western United States: California’s Central Valley aquifer and the Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies America’s heartlands from South Dakota to Texas. If we lose these aquifers, we lose nearly 20 percent of the world’s grain crop, more than 40 percent of our nation’s beef production, and about 40 percent of the vegetables, nuts, and fruits consumed in the United States.
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Some consequences of aquifer loss are already visible in western Kansas, where I grew up and where my family has farmed for generations. Eight decades of intensive pumping caused the water table to plummet. Nearly all springs and streams have gone dry. Most wells have dwindled, and many have been emptied altogether. Now the same place that nurtured generations of my family has one of the world’s highest rates of aquifer decline.
Today, the same deep-well irrigation that gave farmers like my great-grandfather a second chance after the Dust Bowl, in the 1930s, is exhausting the portion of the aquifer that remains. This poses a threat to the existence of many Plains communities, which have already been hit hard by the corporate takeover of farmland, declining populations, rising deaths from suicide and substance abuse, and racial and economic inequities. The profits of industrial agriculture flow from groundwater; so do our communities’ tax bases, land values, and budgets for hospitals, schools, and social services.
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As Earth warms and droughts intensify, these pressures will only increase.
When groundwater runs out, myths of growth and profit collapse into dust. Drying aquifers can result in starvation, migration, and violence. Or they can prompt us to rethink our relationship to one another and to the irreplaceable natural resources that we share. Aquifers belong to everyone, and especially to future generations.