Loss of America’s Largest Aquifer – the Ogallala (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Loss of America’s Largest Aquifer – the Ogallala (2018)

duwaterlawreview.com

57 pointsNoRagrets27 comments

Let me tell you about the oil companies. They say they drill the saltwater disposal systems to below the aquifer level so they "aren't contaminating it"... I call bullshit.

I think there is more than just water level depletion at risk. And don't get me started on T Boone Pickens and the coming water capitalism boom...

Yup when you drill through them all you end up connecting the aquifers. Yet it shocks me how all these frackers say it needs more study. US government has Superfund sites with these problems and it's well researched....

Turn their FUD around on them. If it "needs more study", then ban it immediately until the risks can be better understood. Anything else would be irresponsible.

Wikipedia's article "Ogallala Aquifer" says that its volume has reduced 9% since the 1940s, 3% in the period 2001-2008 alone (32% of 9%). At this rate of depletion, the aquifer has 240 years left, and once depleted, it would require 6000 years to recharge. Assuming that drawing on the aquifer is feasible only at a volume much greater than 1% of capacity, its useful life would be significantly less than 240 years.

You don't have to "deplete" it like so to cause problems. Some areas that are higher up will lose access before others. In some places, wells will have to be drilled deeper, and everywhere, the water table will drop.

You can't get something for nothing.

"Success" seems to mean reducing the decline of the water table from 21 inches/year to 17 in isolated places, with the rest still pumping madly away.

If we needed another example of Late-Stage Capitalist Failure, we needn't look far. Fittingly, conflict between Nebraska and Kansas is over water from the Republican River basin.

Off the top of my head and without source attribution: Over 90% of the land that can be farmed is being farmed. Over 3/4 of that is for livestock feeding. Almost 1/3 of cereal crop grown is for animals. Now is probably a good time to eliminate meat from our diets. And grow more forests and grasslands. Grasslands more than trees will sequester carbon.

It’s a different kind of aquifer crisis here in California. We are a desert and places that draw from the fast depleting aquifers will have to deal with salt water flowing back in...that would be a disaster. Ca has 45-50 billion in Ag revenue. That industry would be decimated. It’s staggeringly mind boggling as to how easy it is to sacrifice the commons without any foresight whatsoever.

conflict

Nebraska has certain well-understood longstanding obligations with respect to water flowing into Kansas, but that is a normal thing and there haven't been arguments about it since 2002. Kansans learned not to initiate shooting wars with neighboring states back when we burned Lawrence.

Nebraska and Kansas have used different enforcement regimes, but a variety of regulatory approaches is one of the benefits of the federal system.

It seems unlikely that the aquifer will be restored within the next century, but slowing the rate of destruction is still desirable. IMHO attempting to do it all with well pumping enforcement won't work. A better approach would be to end all government subsidies for USA grain production. Grain farmers would complain, and some would go out of business, but the result would be less intensive irrigation.

I hear you about the ending of subsidies. It is likely one of the first meaningful steps to take to resolve multiple issues we face wrt Ag/trade/aquifer/environment

What do you think should be done to restore aquifer strength not just in that region but also every where else..like out west in CA.

For CA, take a look at the ballot initiative that failed miserably in the last election. double facepalm

The California situation is different, perhaps more similar to Arizona than to the Great Plains. IMHO, Arizonans should realize that they have built huge cities in the desert, and consequently should cease irrigated agriculture completely. That would allow some dairy to return to the Midwest where it belongs, but that's a mere aesthetic preference of mine.

My thoughts about California are not quite so drastic because the most intensively farmed areas did not start out as deserts. Still, ISTM a proper pricing structure for irrigation water would not result in almonds dominating the southern Central Valley as they do.

Arizonan here. I understand the thought behind the above suggestion in re : cessation of irrigated ag, but the truth is that irrigation has been practiced here for over a thousand years [the current system is an expansion of / was built on top of the one created long ago by the indigenous people known today as Hohokam] and most of that was done in a responsible, sustainable manner.

I certainly agree that a revision of the current practices is indicated. There is a huge amount of water wasted in AZ on lawns, golf courses, fountains, etc etc. A revamp of ag practices [maybe including some of the indigenous strategies e.g., sunken-bed planting] and wise restrictions on frivolous use would be better than eliminating irrigation; AZ is naturally a high-yield area due to the abundance of sunlight and relative paucity of pests.

p.s. AZ is home to some of the most water-wise crops in the world such as tepary beans, and the corn cultivar Chapalote which has its gene center here is one of the oldest continuously cultivated food cultivars in the world

Thanks for responding. Progress is being made on lawns, but I don't think you're going to be able to get rid of the golf courses in the near future. We're told that Millennials are killing golf so it might happen in another 40 years... I won't miss it. Lawns and golf courses aren't the only reasons that cities need water.

As I hinted with the dairy comment, alfalfa is a more problematic crop for Arizona than tepary beans and Chapalote.

This is true re alfalfa being a thirsty crop and is mostly exported. Demand from China has multiplied multiple times over. [1]

Interestingly the reason China needs alfalfa exports is because their aquifers can’t support the demand for forage for their dairy industry. It’s relatively new with the new middle class needing milk. It’s one billion plus that is hungry for stufff they never knew they needed before.

Meanwhile dairy in USA is crumbling(not least of the reasons is due to the subsidies). Dairy farmers in the US make less than what it costs. What a mess!

Meanwhile, Fonterra co-op in NZ started selling milk powder to China and is losing money. We are looking at a new economic landscape.

I don’t even know what to make of it to predict how it will end up. Regardless, it will certainly mean more consumption. And more loss of biosphere and water becoming a more precious commodity than even black gold of the 20th century. Interesting times indeed..

[1]https://www.farmprogress.com/forage/exports-may-drive-2018-w...

> My thoughts about California are not quite so drastic because the most intensively farmed areas did not start out as deserts.

I presume that you're thinking of the Central Valley. But the area around El Centro is very intensively cultivated, and I'm pretty sure it started out as desert...

> Late-Stage Capitalist Failure

Socialist economies have hardly been a model of sustainability and environmentalism. They're much worse.

I don't think it's capitalism. The resource certainly is not property owned and managed for profit. It's a community owned resource whose users aren't paying for what they use.

Even if it were owned by a group of 100 people, if all had the right to use as much as they want and it will eventually be used up, the incentives for such a resource make it a tragedy of the commons.

It would be better if all the existing users or all the residents of the region became shareholders in a corporation that charged everybody for what they use. Owners have an incentive to not let their resource be all used up at low prices. No, they want to conserve a resource and charge higher prices if they can.

The everybody-owns-it model means people only pay for the cost of pumping the water, without any regard for what water will cost once the resource is gone. A resource with sensible ownership, on the other hand, would incentivize conservation, because customers are more likely to pay a price that reflects the future value of the water, not just the cost to pump it.

So, no, I don't think the current situation is capitalism. It is a situation that property rights has not been properly applied to yet.

I think you mean Tragedy of the Commons situation?

I fail to see the distinction in meaning. I phrase it the way Wikipedia does. It can happen on the Jersey Shore, I suppose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

That works fine if the owners are invested in preserving the resource.

This doesn't square well with publicly traded companies who have to ensure their operation is maximally profitable in the short term. They'd pump the place dry, then find a way to turn sand into money.

If you own a resource, you have incentive to preserve it. Or at least you have an incentive to not sell all it off now at a cheap price. If it's the only water where you live, this is especially true.

If you are a shareholder in a corporation set up to own the resource and you want to maximize your profit, you might sell your shares rather than push the corporation to dump all the water for cash now.

A recent study found that real restate agents take longer to sell their own houses than they take to sell other people's. Why don't they sell quick so they can have more cash quick? Because they know it pays to wait.

Every resource has a current value and future value. If a resource will fall in value over time, you'd want to sell it all now. If water is scarce in an area, this is very unlikely to be true, especially if its population is increasing.

Still, I can't see that working in a world where corporations have diverse sources of income, where investors are not necessarily invested in a given resource (or a given people/economic class), and where short term competitiveness is crucial for corporate survival.

A lot of people don't understand the value of having a stream of income versus a wad of money in their hands now.

That's why J. G. Wentworth is in business, to profit from people who understand it.

But in business and most every discussion I can recall about business models, having a reliable stream of income is valued. People buy real estate and rent it out to establish such a stream of income.

And, if you are able to avoid earning all your cash now and instead earn o=it over time, you reduce and defer your taxes too.

"Fittingly"?

Note that blue California has far more acute acquifer depletion and (thanks to one-party control) has no oil extraction tax... contributing to severe groundwater poisoning in places like Kern county.

Coastal CA already suffers saltwater intrusion into groundwater... which, of course, is blamed on global warming instead of acquifer depletion.

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