Ogallala Aquifer GONE as American Farmland COLLAPSES and Grocery Prices RISE!

 

 

 

#Ogallala #OgallalaAquifer #HighPlains

 

This video explains why the Ogallala Aquifer — the largest freshwater deposit in North America — is being permanently depleted and what that means for American food production. The Ogallala Aquifer sits beneath 174,000 square miles across eight states, from South Dakota to the Texas Panhandle. It holds water that accumulated during the last ice age and recharges so slowly that pumping exceeds natural replenishment by a factor of roughly 2,000 to one. Large-scale irrigation began after World War II and has never stopped. Today the aquifer supports 30 percent of all groundwater used for irrigation in the United States and underpins 20 percent of the country's wheat, corn, cotton, and cattle production. In parts of southwest Kansas, the water table has already dropped below pump intake levels — those wells are dry now, not in some projected future. 

What's covered in this video: 

 

The Ogallala Aquifer was formed when the Rocky Mountains deposited sand and gravel across the Great Plains during the Miocene epoch, trapping ancient water that is now classified by the U.S. Geological Survey as a non-renewable resource. 

 

Geologist N.H. Darton named the aquifer in 1899 after the town of Ogallala, Nebraska, where he first studied the formation, though the water it holds predates human civilization by millions of years.

 

 High-capacity irrigation pumping began in 1909 and accelerated dramatically after World War II with cheap diesel and center-pivot irrigation systems, creating the green circles still visible from the air over western Kansas. 

The aquifer varies dramatically by region: Nebraska's Sandhills still hold over a thousand feet of saturated water, while parts of the Texas Panhandle have thinned to under a hundred feet, with recharge in the southern zone measuring less than the thickness of a credit card per year. 

 

Kansas Geological Survey employee Brownie Wilson has spent years measuring well levels across western Kansas, documenting drops of more than a hundred feet in some locations since he began, with some falling as much as ten feet in a single bad year. 

 

Water lawyer Burke Griggs, who now teaches water law at a Kansas university, argues the aquifer is not running out because of drought but because states deliberately permitted every well decades ago, a policy the Kansas Geological Survey calls "planned depletion." 

 

The downstream consequences of aquifer exhaustion follow a predictable sequence: irrigated land reverts to dryland, corn yields fall, feedlots lose their feed supply, meatpacking plants in cities like Garden City, 

 

Liberal, and Guymon lose their cattle, and rural towns lose their economic base. The Spinhirne family near Vega, Texas, has farmed the same ground since 1910, and represents the four-generation human reality of a region built on a resource that was always being spent, not saved. 

 

The northern portions of the aquifer, particularly under the Nebraska Sandhills, will continue to yield water for another century or more, but the infrastructure, towns, feedlots, and farms built on the assumption of indefinite supply face a different timeline in the south. 

 

 

Mentioned in this video: Ogallala Aquifer, N.H. Darton, Ogallala Nebraska, U.S. Geological Survey, Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, Miocene epoch, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, Nebraska Sandhills, Valentine Nebraska, Mullen Nebraska, Thedford Nebraska, Republican River Basin, McCook Nebraska, Imperial Nebraska, Wallace County Kansas, Brownie Wilson, Kansas Geological Survey, Sherman County Kansas, Wichita County Kansas, Greeley County Kansas, Hamilton County Kansas, Garden City Kansas, Liberal Kansas, Finney County Kansas, Oklahoma Panhandle, Guymon Oklahoma, Texhoma Oklahoma, Dalhart Texas, Dumas Texas, Amarillo Texas, Hereford Texas, Dimmitt Texas, Vega Texas, Spinhirne family, Lubbock Texas, Burke Griggs, planned depletion, center-pivot irrigation, Dust Bowl, paleowater, fossil water

 

 

 

Source:  Fallen Earth