[HN Gopher] The depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer in Western Kansas
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The depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer in Western Kansas
Author : speckx
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-06-30 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kansasreflector.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kansasreflector.com)
| jmclnx wrote:
| Especially with the latest US Supreme Court Rulings, the agencies
| cannot do anything, it is up to just Kansas or Congress. And
| without a National Commitment, Kansas alone will be unable to do
| much.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Not a bad thing. The aquifer will be depleted, existing use
| cases will die, and solving this can be revisited decades or
| centuries from now after the electorate and representatives
| have turned over. The outcome is based on choices made.
|
| Sibling comment mentions returning the land to nature; new
| expanded national lands would be great. If anything, efforts to
| accelerate the depletion should be undertaken to speedrun the
| outcome. This avoids the slow decline of unnecessary intensive
| farming of the land, and pushes the system to failure more
| rapidly.
| kibwen wrote:
| You can't fix a depleted aquifer on human timescales. The
| ground settles and loses the ability to hold water.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Even better, thanks for the context.
| kibwen wrote:
| For an even more urgent example of this in action right
| now, see how Mexico City is currently sinking at an
| incredible rate: https://www.sciencealert.com/mexico-
| city-is-sinking-at-an-al...
|
| _" Some areas in Mexico City are slipping as fast as 20
| inches a year in recent decades, according to
| researchers. Overall, the clay layers under the soil have
| compressed by 17 percent in the last century. A culprit
| for the uneven sinking in Mexico City, researchers say,
| is pumping water from underground. The water extraction
| enables the porous soil to compact and depress. Because
| more than half of the city's water supply comes from
| underground aquifers, its leaders have struggled to
| tackle the problem. Most of this sinking, the researchers
| say, is irreversible because the Earth is still
| compacting and responding to the ways water was drained a
| long time ago. Cabral-Cano and his colleagues project the
| land is going to sink another 100 feet over the next 150
| years."_
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| At some point, people have to come to terms with their poor
| choices. Building in a flood zone, building in a dense forest
| and farming in an arid land all seem like poor choices for long
| term success. However, there may be some good to come of
| depopulating SW Kansas. With the farmland abandoned, maybe we
| can finally give it back to the bison?
| beambot wrote:
| Why should they care when FEMA will just keep bailing
| everyone out, subsidized by everyone else's tax dollars. Just
| look at New Orleans, but now imagine it scaled up to the
| entire state of Florida...
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I don't know man?
|
| I was working for Halliburton, so I knew there were good
| reasons to bail Houston/New Orleans out. Just take a
| cursory look at any map of our energy infrastructure.
|
| Conversely, there is little reason to bail out Kansas.
|
| There are just some uncomfortable realities about how
| logistics and infrastructure work in this nation. And that
| means places like, LA, Norfolk, Seattle, New York, New
| Orleans, Houston, etc are far more important than, say,
| Fort Lauderdale or Miami. Not that we shouldn't try to help
| places like Fort Lauderdale or Miami. But for instance, not
| that it ever would, but if it came down to Norfolk or
| Miami, it's gotta be Norfolk we save. If it ever came down
| to Houston or Savannah, it's gotta be Houston we save.
| Those choices are just engineering sense.
|
| The issue here is Kansas didn't do anything to make that
| area of its state indispensable to the US. Maybe wind farms
| or something? I don't know? But having been around the
| people who make those calls, I can tell you they aren't
| terribly sentimental by nature. If they are sentimental at
| all, it is by legal obligation (ie - force) or political
| pressure.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| No, actully, people can jusdy keep doing stupid things
| because we have such a largesse of basic comfort. They arnt
| going to suddenly change and fascism.is likely the.equal
| choice than any.ecologically smart.one'
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > But Kansas water rights are based on the "first in time --
| first in right" principle, which means the earliest users are
| given priority.
|
| It's not the "earliest users", but the earliest plot of land,
| municipality, et cetera that gets priority. You can stake your
| claim and transfer it from what I can tell.
|
| I honestly don't understand how this doesn't fall afoul of the
| Article 1, Section 10 Titles of Nobility clause. I asked a lawyer
| who wrote about this clause once in an email and he thought it
| odd to think that this is a violation of the Titles of Nobility
| clause. But shouldn't any heritable and transferable privilege to
| a public good be considered a "title of nobility"?
| btilly wrote:
| What Title do you think has been granted by having a particular
| property right tied to a particular piece of property?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Something equivalent to manorial lordship. The title itself
| would be "senior water rights holder". The right granted by
| this heritable privilege is the right to first service. A
| first service which may result in an inferior holder of water
| rights not getting any water at all.
|
| It's important to note that, at least some, constitutional
| scholars see a focus on an actual "title" as beside the
| point. A state can call Michael Jackson the "King of Pop"
| without violating the clause because this title does not
| actually grant noble privilege in any way. It's just a name.
| However granting a heritable privilege that is not available
| to anyone meeting a similar, non-heritable requirement (such
| as a driver's license, which is theoretically equally
| available to all), does violate the titles of nobility
| clauses even if no actual "title" is granted with it.
|
| https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C8-2/.
| ..
| lazide wrote:
| The reason why the lawyer looked at you strange is because
| if you applied that rule it would literally break all
| property rights, everywhere in the US. So of course no
| court is going to apply it that way.
|
| Since property can always be inherited, and ownership of
| property confers rights.
|
| None of this involves 'nobility' (necessarily) either.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Property rights are not rights to a common resource. Some
| mineral rights can be, but management of mineral rights
| (including gas) commonly fall under government
| supervision with any benefits (i.e. money) of use of the
| rights apportioned appropriately among all rights
| holders. Water rights, with seniority, are not so
| apportioned.
|
| It's this senior right privilege, that is granted
| exclusively by the state, that I'm claiming is the title
| of nobility.
| vundercind wrote:
| > Property rights are not rights to a common resource.
|
| You're disagreeing with John Locke, among others, here.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I am not an economist. Yes, common resources such as
| water are rivalrous, and thus not public goods, but
| forgive me for not having the full vocabulary that a
| student of economics and privileges would.
|
| You should be understanding the points I'm making here as
| I believe I've highlighted what I think is salient.
| Others can disagree with whether these points are indeed
| salient, but they (and you) should at least basically
| understand the point I am trying to make.
|
| I assume John Locke would understand, as he was alive
| during the passing of the Tenures Abolition Act of 1660.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Locke was a dunce, what of it?
| vundercind wrote:
| I mean, that is also true.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| But at the very least Henry George agrees with GP ;)
| lisper wrote:
| > Property rights are not rights to a common resource.
|
| They can be. Native Americans considered e.g. land to be
| a common resource, and yet today you can own it. What is
| a "common resource" is a matter of social convention, not
| a consequence of the laws of physics.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Something equivalent to manorial lordship.
|
| A manor lord _is not a noble_. Functionally speaking,
| people like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who
| held large estates, would have been roughly equivalent in
| stature to a manor lord, or what was by that time a
| gentleman. They would have been eligible to vote in, or be
| a member of, the House of Commons, but not the House of
| Lords. In general, the goal of the Titles and Nobility
| clause is to foreclose the possibility of an American
| peerage.
|
| It is worth noting that there is a very important
| difference between a title of nobility and title to
| property rights. Were I an English peer, I would have no
| right to decide who should inherit my title upon my death
| (or even before then); the title's inheritance is strictly
| decided by the monarch. But for property, I can generally
| subdivide the property at will, and even grant other people
| the property or use thereof subject to almost whatever
| constraints I can put on it (this is where things like the
| rule against perpetuities come in).
|
| Water rights are property rights, not titles of nobility,
| and it's not even a close question.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Its the right to withdraw water, which isnt static
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > Article 1, Section 10 Titles of Nobility clause
|
| It's an intriguing idea. Now spend even one minute thinking
| deeply about the Equal Protection Clause, and drown in sorrow.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "Ogallala Aquifer... is recharged on a geological time scale...
| That depletion is accelerated by climate change and continued
| over pumping of water."
|
| Is it obligatory to put in stuff about climate change in spite of
| the fact that it's barely relevant?
|
| We are over pumping when we exceed the replenishment rate. And
| that is going on in just about every aquifer I have heard about.
| Climate change has nothing to do with it. Almond tree growing,
| ease of well drilling, and improper use of the pure water have
| more to do with it (e.g.,
| https://www.protectouraquifer.org/issues/poas-fight-to-stop-...)
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| In general I understand and agree with your point. With respect
| to recharging aquifers, climate change can have an effect in
| two ways:
|
| 1) Some plants are far better at recharging aquifers than
| others (indeed, some will basically prevent aquifer recharge).
| Climate change, along with probably the more significant human
| element here, will affect what plants grow here.
|
| 2) Rainfall. https://climate.k-state.edu/precip/county/ I'm not
| seeing huge changes over the last 129 years, so maybe this
| really isn't affecting recharge of the aquifer from Kansas at
| least.
|
| Some parts of the aquifer seem to be recharging well. I know
| that Texas has some recharge locations, but I wonder what
| Nebraska is doing right. https://www.climate.gov/news-
| features/featured-images/nation...
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| It's my understanding that there's no meaningful way we can
| recharge the aquifers:
|
| > Aquifers hold water in between bits of sand, gravel, or
| clay. When the amount of clay in an aquifer is particularly
| high, the grains arrange themselves like plates thrown
| haphazardly in a sink--they've basically got random
| orientations, and the water fills in the spaces between the
| grains. But if you start extracting water from an aquifer,
| those spaces collapse and the grains draw closer together.
| "Those plates rearrange themselves into more like a stack of
| dinner plates that you put in your cupboard," says Sneed. "It
| takes a lot less space, obviously, to stack the plates that
| way. And so that's the compaction of the aquifer system that
| then results in land subsidence at the surface." > > But
| wouldn't pumping more water back into the aquifer force the
| clay plates back to their random, spacey orientations?
| Unfortunately, no. "It'll press those grains apart a little
| bit--you'll get a little bit of expansion in the aquifer
| system represented as uplift on the land surface. But it's a
| tiny amount," says Sneed. We're talking maybe three quarters
| of an inch of movement. "They're still stacked like the
| plates in your cupboard," she continues.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/the-ongoing-collapse-of-the-
| worl...
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Yeah, you'd preferably want to recharge it before the land
| subsides. But even if you don't it's best to try to
| maintain the current levels than let them decrease even
| more.
| mturmon wrote:
| This is an important point, and true insofar as it goes
| (because the discussion you quote is about clay).
|
| But not all aquifers are clay. The ones that are composed
| of coarser material are more stable. Like a lot of Earth
| science, it's complicated.
|
| But, yes, once clay has compacted, it's not reversible and
| that natural storage space has been lost.
| mechagodzilla wrote:
| Increased temperatures also affect evaporation rates (and
| hence how much watering needs to be done). Climate change and
| the future of farming are pretty intimately connected.
| cyberax wrote:
| OK, I started reading the article, and then found this gem:
|
| > The Kansas aqueduct is a nutty idea, but one that has taken
| root among some individuals in western Kansas desperate for a
| solution to continue irrigation after the depletion of the
| Ogallala Aquifer. Aside from its expense and impracticality, it
| is a regressive idea that harkens back to the days of ditches and
| avoids a conversation about us having squandered the resource
| beneath our feet.
|
| Like, WTF? How the hell a "conversation" can solve the depletion
| issue? An aqueduct is a possible solution, yet it's bad because
| it can solve the issue?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| It's not a solution because it doesn't solve the problem of
| excessive water use.
| cyberax wrote:
| What makes the water use "excessive"?
|
| In the case of the aquifer, it's clear. It's a finite
| resource that is going to be depleted sooner rather than
| later.
|
| But that doesn't apply to diverting water from the Missouri
| River.
|
| I guess the author just wants people to self-flagellate and
| repent their sins, rather than look for solutions?
| warcher wrote:
| The solution is obvious and inevitable.
|
| These businesses are going to go under. You cannot run food
| manufacturing operations with the amount of water they have
| available. We will grow food someplace with more water.
|
| The people who own those businesses will hold on until the
| bitter end. This is expected. They will try increasingly
| desperate measures to continue running their business,
| including but not limited to ecologically destructive
| practices. It won't work. There's no water.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| The Missouri discharges an average of 2,445 cubic meters of
| water per second (2004). This is 77.1 cubic kilometers per
| year, but it varies significantly per year, and per time of
| year. In (2000) 26 cubic kilometers of water was removed
| from the Ogallala aquifer. So for an average year we're
| looking at 1/3 of the total flow over the entire basin. And
| on those years when water is needed the most this is likely
| to be an even larger share of the river (such as 2006 when
| 26 cubic kilometers was just over 2/3 of the total Missouri
| discharge).
|
| 2004 -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_by_discharge
|
| 2000 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
|
| It might work, though would be expensive, but what are the
| literal downstream effects?
| cyberax wrote:
| Sure. And that would be a good reason to promote more
| efficient irrigation along with the aqueduct. And to
| limit the amount of water removed from the river, and to
| construct reservoirs to manage the seasonality.
|
| However, calling the proposed aqueduct "regressive" is
| not a good reasoning.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| It seems kind of regressive for a common tax to pay for
| the aquifer that primarily benefits the farmers. If its
| paid for by taxing the farmers directly, or at least
| proportionately, then sure, it probably wouldn't be
| regressive.
| cyberax wrote:
| I don't think the author meant "regressive" in that
| sense.
|
| For them it means: "Actually thinking about a solution
| instead of wringing hands"
| nraynaud wrote:
| They are going to deplete the river, like the Colorado river,
| losing most of it through evaporation. This is a stupid idea
| beacause it is stupid in the south west.
| downrightmike wrote:
| China already did a project like this to move water from the
| wet part to the dry, because their leaders were eager engineers
| and wanted to do it. Turns out that the wet part isn't making
| enough water to the dry part now because of climate change.
| Same thing would happen here. The rockies already create a rain
| shadow over the great plains, there isn't a way to get water
| from the other side of the rockies, because that is what it
| would take. and Cali has been in a drought for along time too.
| There just isn't water available.
| cyberax wrote:
| I'm curious to read about it, do you have links? I can
| (slowly) read Mandarin.
| kickout wrote:
| We don't need western Kansas agriculture's production from a
| national supply perspective. All of those row crops can be grown
| in other rainfed places.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Western Kansas seems to average in the upper teens to mid 20s
| of inches of rainfall per typical year (drier years do come as
| the article notes). If it could be husbanded well you'd think
| that would be sufficient rainfall to grow these crops.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It is sufficient to grow the crops, but not at the yields you
| want. You can't grow in that region without irrigation.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Your user name makes me trust the accuracy of your comment.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| To the downvoters: I just assume that a person who
| identifies enough with the high water use avocado to have
| it in their user name would have done some research into
| agricultural water use.
| kickout wrote:
| That's an average calendar year most likely. A corn crops
| roughly needs 20 inches of water to be viable. Corn is
| usually only grown in 1/3 of the year.
|
| We just shouldn't subsidize crops in this region. If people
| want to make a run at it, more power to them and it may work
| in some years. But no subsidy
| exabrial wrote:
| We need to stop the enormously stupid ethanol requirements in
| gasoline, and corn subsidies to produce them.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 43 million acres of land are farmed for ethanol. Key political
| positions depend on the corn and ag lobby support, including
| Iowa. We won't remove these subsidies, we'll only destroy
| demand with rapid EV uptake that destroys gasoline demand for
| light vehicles (and the ethanol blended into it).
|
| https://www.cardin.senate.gov/press-releases/end-subsidies-f...
|
| https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/understand...
|
| https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/laws/ETH?state=US
| exabrial wrote:
| progress, not perfection. Chip at it one bit at a time.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Certainly, I'm just saying that if the thought is the
| change is going to happen on the policy side, that is
| unlikely due to entrenched self interested parties and US
| governance having mostly failed.
|
| Think in systems. If you are attempting to force them to
| failure, find the weakest points and exert maximum force at
| those points.
| TylerE wrote:
| That's one of the easiest bits to chip off, though. There
| is zero technical or environmental reason to do it (and
| quite a few not to).
| kickout wrote:
| Agree, but from a political standpoint it's cheap. The
| subsidies are overall not expensive and it's good to
| incentivize over production of crops from a nation security
| standpoint.
|
| Below comments are correct, EVs will ultimately be the
| equalizer
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