Ogallala Aquifer

Oklahoma lawmakers met this week to discuss groundwater levels, which are declining in many parts of the state, and explore possible solutions.

About a quarter of the United States’s irrigated cropland sits on top of the Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains. But water levels are dropping, and states are taking different approaches to monitoring how much groundwater irrigators are pumping out.

Water levels in the Ogallala Aquifer continue to plummet as farm irrigation swallows an average of more than 2 billion gallons of groundwater per day statewide. But after decades of mostly inaction from Kansas leaders, the state’s approach to water conservation might finally be starting to shift.

Water committee members are still taking in information about the decline of the Ogallala Aquifer, sedimentation crisis at the state’s reservoirs, and poor water quality in some areas of the state.

After decades of irrigation, the aquifer that makes life possible in dry western Kansas is reaching a critical point. Several counties have already lost more than half of their underground water. But a new plan could save more of what’s left.

For the first time, the state board voted Wednesday to say that Kansas shouldn’t pump the Ogallala aquifer dry to support crop irrigation. The underground water source has seen dramatic declines in recent decades.

The project is meant to prove that large transfers of water could be a tool to help save the disappearing Ogallala Aquifer, which provides irrigation and drinking water to western Kansas. But other groundwater management officials say it’s a distraction from the far more urgent task of conservation.

The water in the Ogallala aquifer is worth billions of dollars to western Kansas, but it’s rapidly disappearing. And it's been a challenge to find ways to slow the depletion.

Cotton growing is on the rise in Kansas, but it still only accounts for a small fraction of the state’s farm production. Now, a combination of global warming, dwindling water and new infrastructure might set the stage for southwest Kansas to become cotton country.

Irrigation practices are changing, partly because of economics and partly because of a cultural shift among farmers on the High Plains.