Western KS Within 25 Years Of Groundwater's End At Current Pumping Rates

[hatrack]

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When the early homesteaders first arrived here in the mid-1800’s the area was so hot and dry in the summer that it was thought to be unfit for farming. Then Mennonites from Russia and Ukraine brought red Turkey wheat to Kansas, said Craig Miner, a Kansas historian. And it grew.

Kansas became America’s top wheat grower, regularly producing close to one-fifth of the country’s total harvest. With their sheaves of wheat, called shocks, stacked upright everywhere in the fields to dry, wheat became so ingrained in the Kansas mind-set that Wichita State University adopted the name Shockers for its mascot. But in the last two decades, farmers have increasingly turned to corn and soybeans, which need nearly twice as much water.

“That part of the state is going to be out of water in about 25 years at the current rate of consumption,” said Mike Hayden, the secretary of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks and a former Kansas governor.

Until recently, farmers had little incentive to conserve water, said Thomas J. Lear, a farmer south of Garden City. Now with the high cost of energy, he pays more attention to how he uses his water. Twice a day he checks on the 29 pumps that drive sprinklers watering his corn and soybeans. But this fall, he will do something his family has not done for more than a decade — grow more irrigated wheat — because it requires less water than corn and soybeans, which make up 85 percent of his farmland. He sees the future for this parched area in more drought-resistant crops like grain sorghum, which can be used in ethanol plants as a corn substitute, and in sunflowers or cotton. “For a generation we thought the water was infinite,” Mr. Lear said. “What is going to drive conservation is the high cost of pumping. It is going to force you to do what you ought to do anyway.”

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http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=60705

[acmavm]

1. I always get really angy at people who water their damn lawns

all the time. Wars will soon start over water. Hell, states here in the good old US are fighting over water rights, blocked rivers and streams, etc.

Why do Americans feel that having a green lawn is more important than having a viable water supply? Hell, when water was being rationed here a couple years ago, a decent human being would have just let the lawn go to help conserve. Do you think they did? Hell no. The days (even/odd) that they could water their lawns the cranked up the old sprinklers and let 'em rip for hours. I have a neighbor who watered even when she wasn't supposed to.

People are not on a higher rung then the animal kingdom on the evolutionary ladder. That's the one thing I think Darwin got wrong. We seem to have a much larger capacity for destruction than we do anything else. Progress is just another word for us fucking up something else further on down the line.

[hunter]

4. It's a fault of Western Civilization, not of Darwin.

To quote Stephen Jay Gould:

Darwin’s theory in natural selection doesn’t make any reference to any notion of progress, or development or increasing complexity. It’s only a theory about adaptation to changing environments. There are as many ways to adapt to local environments by becoming less complex is by getting more complex, but for reasons of our history and our biases and our preferences, we very much want to spin doctor that theory and make it appear as though the history of life is a predictable rise to increasing complexity and progress I think so that we can validate ourselves as the crown of creation.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/november96/gould.htm

[acmavm]

5. That is exactly exactly exactly what I meant. Thank you.

[CrispyQ]

6. The green lawns of every front & back yard bother me too,

but the acres of lawn in the business parks that no one ever walks on or plays on is simply amazing. And they are some of the worst offenders of watering during the hottest part of the day or having sprinkler heads that shoot the water all over the street.

[HamdenRice]

10. My experiment with Darwin and lawns

I also think watering the lawn is an unforgiveable waste of a precious resource, and I live in the water rich NYC area.

Two years ago, I stopped watering my lawn. The first year, some grass died and there were brown spots. But after two years, it seems that the drought resistant species and individuals have predominated. My grass is as green as my neighbors' who water several times a week.

It struck me that watering your lawn actually encourages water dependent species and strains to proliferate, actually causing your lawn to become more watering dependent.

It's idiotic, but people watering their lawns place themselves in a Darwinian vicious cycle.

[DURHAM D]

2. Mr. Lear is lying - "For a generation we thought the

water was infinite". Bull.

I grew up in central Kansas (where we were not allowed to empty the reservoir by irrigating) because we have always known that the Ogallah Aquifer was rapidly being drained down and would turn western Kansas back into a dust bowl. My personal knowledge of this problem is over 50 years long. Give me a break.

The clout of the corporate farm interests in the western part of the State have been driving policy and raping the water source for years.

And a minor point - never heard the "German Russians" or "Volga Germans" referred to before as the Mennonites from Russia and Ukraine. In fact, I thought most of them were Lutheran.

[phantom power]

3. Well, this is the same party of fuck-nuts whose track-record includes...

such gems as "nobody ever imagined the levies would break." and "nobody ever imagined terrorists flying planes into skyscrapers."

[AZCat]

7. If you don't mind me asking...

where'd you grow up? I'm a native Kansan myself. My hometown actually doesn't get groundwater from the Ogallah - there's a weird aquifer that feeds it and the surrounding area that is separate from the Ogallah - but it is suffering the same water table problems that occur everywhere else (including Tucson, my adopted home).

[DURHAM D]

8. The big bend of the Arkansas River - Great Bend. eom

[AZCat]

11. I'm from upriver.

Hutchinson, to be exact, although we lived several other places when I was growing up. I looked a little into it and it appears that the water for Hutchinson comes from part of the High Plains aquifer, of which the Ogallala formation is a part (a large part too - about 80%). There's a separate formation that serves Reno and Sedgewick counties if I've read correctly. My mom deals with this stuff pretty regularly so I plan on asking her the next time we talk.

[DURHAM D]

12. My parents/sibling live in Hutch. Nephews graduated

from high school in Hutch. Been there two times this past summer and
going out again next month.

My ancestors farmed for 4 generations in Rice County - gave it up.

Kansas folk are waking up to their blind faith in Repugs. I really got my families attention when I told them that when people ask me where I was from I tell them Oklahoma because I didn't want to have a conversation about "What's the Matter with Kansas", or evolution and the school board, or Fred Phelps. or OZ.

[Strelnikov_]

9. This Was Addressed In The Hydrogeology Course I Took circa 1980

at a midwestern university.

Maybe Mr. Lear was simply listening to the wrong experts. Maybe some working for that era's incarnation of AEI, CEI, or the ever prescient 'Club For Growth'.