What happens to America when the Ogallala aquifer runs dry?

[Quartz]

As I understand it - fight my ignorance here - a large part of America depends upon the Ogallala aquifer. But it's being used up. Wells are having to be dug ever deeper. What will happen to America economically and politically when there's no more water?

[Sage Rat]

The cost of water will rise. A few revolutionary methods of desalinization and long-distance water transportation will be patented, making a few billionaires, and the cost of water will decrease again.

Jobs will be lost and then created.

[Folacin]

Politically, from strictly a population view point, not much. The areas supported by the aquifer are already pretty sparsely populated (and generally in a population decline already).

Economically, going to lose a lot of wheat from Kansas and the Dakotas that is pretty heavily irrigated. Not a pretty thing, but I imagine the adjustment wouldn't be overly dramatic.

On the potentially plus side, the Buffalo Commons would get a tremendous boost.

[greenslime1951]

Irrigated dryland farming pretty much crapped out in the Dust Bowl era and has been going downhill ever since. The population of the areas that directly overlay the Ogallala has been declining for decades. The Ogallala won't be completely "depauperated" (so help me, that's the word hydrologists use); it will merely at some point be too expensive to pump the water. At that point, much of our wheat production will have to shift elsewhere, and a positive benefit might be the return of some areas of the Great Plains to natural grassland.

There are and have been schemes afoot for interregional water transfer, much of it involving bringing water down from Canada, such as NAWAPA (North American Water and Power Alliance). But so far, the (truly immense) cost isn't seen to produce all that much benefit, particularly since it seems that the High Plains region was never a good place to farm in the first place (really, it's a huge expanse of flat, windy, cold, barren, miserable nothing, and it's ludicrous that we killed so many Indians to gain control of it).

[chacoguy]

Originally Posted by Folacin

The areas supported by the aquifer are already pretty sparsely populated

The area supported by the crops watered by the aquifer is global.

[kunilou]

There are about 20 million acres of irrigated farmland in the Great Plains. That's a big chunk, but tiny in comparison to the 920 million acres of total farmland in the U.S.

So, first and foremost, there won't be huge shortages of food.

And there are plenty of things you can do without irrigation. Certain crops, like milo, don't require as much water as corn. There's also a dryland rotation of wheat (winter wheat, fallow, spring wheat, fallow). Of course, as greenslime1951 notes, you can always let the fields go back to pasture land and graze as many or few cattle as they will support.

Certainly the local economy will be disrupted in both the short and long-term. But it will be more like the loss of industry in the Midwest than a food crisis.

[GreasyJack]

Originally Posted by greenslime1951

Irrigated dryland farming pretty much crapped out in the Dust Bowl era and has been going downhill ever since.

Actually, irrigated dryland farming pretty much started with the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl came about because people were NOT using irrigation but instead simply farming with what residual moisture there was in the sod. Once that was depleted, there was nothing to hold the soil in place and the result was the huge dusters. Powered wells that could reach the Ogalalla didn't become widespread until after the worst of the Dust Bowl years and being able to pump water out of the aquifer onto the land was a big part of what stabilized the soil and prevented further erosion.

Unquestionably the ideal end-game in the high plains is a return to grasslands and grazing (be it cattle or bison), but the question is whether it will be an orderly transition or not. One of the big lessons of the Dust Bowl was that in that region you simply can't abandon land and expect it to return to its primeval grassland state on its own-- without deliberate reclamation, it will turn to desert instead of grassland. I would assume reverting the land to government ownership would make the most sense, but at the moment there is no process for returning disused farmland to government ownership and reclamation. I would hope that this will change as the situation in the aquifer beings to become critical, but there is certainly going to be a lot of local resistance to the government buying up large swaths of land for any reason.

[JackieLikesVariety]

it's a huge expanse of flat, windy, cold, barren, miserable nothing


hey, little more respect since some of us live here!

[mmmbeer]

Haven't heard that name before or since Lonesome Dove. I know someone was waiting for that reference, so there ya go.

[Boyo Jim]

I was thinking about the same question as the OP, so I started a thread in GQ -- Do governments re-fill underground aquifers? It's based on this Reuters story, which mentions deliberately replenishing aquifers.

I'm thinking about times of flooding, when the Mississippi and other rivers overflow their banks and cover tens of thousands of acres. Perhaps they can figure out a way to redirect the flood waters to the aquifers, rather then simply going down river and flooding successive farms and cities along their banks.

I don't really know if that would be enough, however.

[kunilou]

Originally Posted by Boyo Jim

I'm thinking about times of flooding, when the Mississippi and other rivers overflow their banks and cover tens of thousands of acres. Perhaps they can figure out a way to redirect the flood waters to the aquifers, rather then simply going down river and flooding successive farms and cities along their banks.

I don't really know if that would be enough, however.

The problem isn't with the water going downriver, it's with the water going downhill. Using the Mississippi River as an example, St. Paul, MN is 702 ft. above sea level. St. Louis, MO is 466 feet, Memphis, TN is 337 feet and so on down to the Gulf of Mexico and sea level.

When you look at the Great Plains, however, Grand Island, NE is 1,860 feet above sea level, Garden City, KS is 2,838 feet and Amarillo, Tx is 3,605 feet. Gravity is not your friend in this case.

[Leaffan]

Good old boys will be drinking whiskey and rye.

[Boyo Jim]

Originally Posted by kunilou

The problem isn't with the water going downriver, it's with the water going downhill. Using the Mississippi River as an example, St. Paul, MN is 702 ft. above sea level. St. Louis, MO is 466 feet, Memphis, TN is 337 feet and so on down to the Gulf of Mexico and sea level.

When you look at the Great Plains, however, Grand Island, NE is 1,860 feet above sea level, Garden City, KS is 2,838 feet and Amarillo, Tx is 3,605 feet. Gravity is not your friend in this case.

That's a very good point. I was assuming that the surface water would always be above the aquifer water, but that isn't necessarily the case. So the real question is how deep below the surface is the Oglala aquifer.

I don't know the answer to that, but I'd guess it is less than a thousand feet, which means (at best) pumping rather than just "redirecting it underground".

[GreasyJack]

Originally Posted by Boyo Jim

That's a very good point. I was assuming that the surface water would always be above the aquifer water, but that isn't necessarily the case. So the real question is how deep below the surface is the Oglala aquifer.

I don't know the answer to that, but I'd guess it is less than a thousand feet, which means (at best) pumping rather than just "redirecting it underground".

Yeah, about 200-800 ft below ground level, so bringing water up from the Mississippi would definitely be a challenge. The Missouri River runs right through the northern part of the aquifer, though, and also occasionally gets catastrophic flooding. But realistically, simply using surface water instead of aquifer water would be a heck of a lot more practical than actually trying to recharge the aquifer.

There is a fair amount of surface water penned up behind the dozens of dams of dubious utility built in the region during the 30's though 60's. A lot of these projects were ostensibly supposed to provide irrigation water, but virtually none of them actually do in any great amount because pumping water out of the Ogalalla is so much easier. I would imagine in the post-aquifer Great Plains a certain amount of agriculture would be saved by actually using these reservoirs when geographically convenient.