Wells Dry, Fertile Plains Turn to Dust

[unhappycamper]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/us/high-plains-aquifer-dwindles-hurting-farmers.html?ref=science



Near Garden City, Kan., the High Plains Aquifer is giving out.

Wells Dry, Fertile Plains Turn to Dust
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: May 19, 2013

HASKELL COUNTY, Kan. — Forty-nine years ago, Ashley Yost’s grandfather sank a well deep into a half-mile square of rich Kansas farmland. He struck an artery of water so prodigious that he could pump 1,600 gallons to the surface every minute.

Last year, Mr. Yost was coaxing just 300 gallons from the earth, and pumping up sand in order to do it. By harvest time, the grit had robbed him of $20,000 worth of pumps and any hope of returning to the bumper harvests of years past.

“That’s prime land,” he said not long ago, gesturing from his pickup at the stubby remains of last year’s crop. “I’ve raised 294 bushels of corn an acre there before, with water and the Lord’s help.” Now, he said, “it’s over.”

The land, known as Section 35, sits atop the High Plains Aquifer, a waterlogged jumble of sand, clay and gravel that begins beneath Wyoming and South Dakota and stretches clear to the Texas Panhandle. The aquifer’s northern reaches still hold enough water in many places to last hundreds of years. But as one heads south, it is increasingly tapped out, drained by ever more intensive farming and, lately, by drought.

[pipoman]

1. 49 years ago..1964..

80 years ago..the "dirty 30's", his land went through a decade long drought, in fact was within 100 miles of the epicenter of the drought. His deep well wasn't in place then, I suspect it would have been equally dry. The Native Americans knew that life on the plains has never been static..this is why plains Indians were the most transient of all..not denying climate change, just that the cyclical nature of weather in this part of the country has produced conditions similar or worse than is currently happening..

[DinahMoeHum]

2. "Dust Bowl" redux??????

Could happen again, ya know. Just sayin'.

[Nihil]

3. Mr.Yost needs to get his head out of his arse ...

> “I’ve raised 294 bushels of corn an acre there before, with water and the Lord’s help.
> ” Now, he said, “it’s over.”

Well done pal, your "bumper harvests of years past" had shit all to do with "the Lord's help"
and everything to do with the water that you & your colleagues have been wasting for decades.

A world of finite resources can be a real bitch can't it?