Drought Caused Big Drop in Texas Portion of Ogallala
The historic Texas drought caused the Ogallala Aquifer to experience its largest decline in 25 years across a large swath of the Texas Panhandle, new numbers from a water district show.
The 16-county High Plains Underground Water Conservation District reported this week that its monitoring wells showed an average decline last year of 2.56 feet — the third-largest in the district’s 61-year history, and three times the average rate over the past decade. Farmers pumped more water during the drought to compensate for the lack of rainfall, which was about two-thirds less than normal last year in Lubbock and ...
Comments (6)
Another 99%
Will not be long before the taxes on water will go to the roof. Our current GOP government loves that we have no water, as it creates an avenue for huge profits from their Billionaire buddies.
The champagne will be bubbling all over the place in the near future.
Charlene Rose via Texas Tribune on Facebook
So, serious drop in water and now we have a nuclear waste dump on top of the aquifer, too. Scary.
Nicholas Vilbas via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Growing a water intensive crop in an arid region = smart
Mike Mecke
Excellent story and on target. Is there any really serious talk about required conservation irrigation goals on farms, along with increased conservation in homes, towns and for cities in region? Goals similar to San Antonio's or El Paso's? Or switching to economically profitable, but lower water-using crops to lengthen farming life? At least doing so in a gradual fashion to provide time for harvest and cropping/equipment differences. Just as should be happening out in West Texas or in the Lower RG Valley.
Folks, the cities have the votes and money and Austin-power - they WILL end up with agriculture's water, sooner rather than later, if ag efficiencies don't skyrocket. Those plans are commonly displayed in Regional Water Plans - now!
I worked with that region's irrigators in mid-60's and saw farms losing irrigation in Midland area even back then. And little or NO conservation then that I saw anywhere around South Plains region. Bar ditches running full of water for miles - "free water" and cheap fuel. Sad.
Papa Ray
The author needs to site his sources. Because what the Goverment is saying is that the drop is very little compared to what is left in the Aquifer.
In fact from Lubbock south the level of water in the Aquifert has INCREASED in the last couple of years.
And of course the government experts say that out of the estimated over TWO TRILLION acre ft. available in the Ogallala Aquifer -- Only a few millions of acre ft. has been used since measurements begin in the fiftys, only sixty years ago.
Poor article, poor journalism.
Papa Ray
Sunny moon
Drought just like desert cause the big drop in agriculture and farmland plants stop growing .There will be more and more desert area encourage and more and more plant gland decreased all over the world .and here is a big true example opened in China used the Solartech.cn solar water pump made a good job about desert control ,and the project website here :http://www.solartech.cn/detail.aspx?cid=618