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Panhandle of Ne. | Richard, badjaccs has answered some of your questions, but in my 55 plus years of experience in irrigated farming, There are many years we just give our water away, be it continuing to irrigate a crop that has been hailed on/hurt by wind/sand, frosted on etc. just trying to make what's left out there into a sellable crop. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Them there are the years, such as this year, that we continue to irrigate even though it appears now that we will be harvesting a crop that is well below our COP. It has always been a very difficult decision to try to make something out of nothing, but, that is what most all farmers have to do at some point in their career. It is very disturbing to me to just give our water away, but, we can't predict the future any better now than we could 50 years ago.
Currently, in our area we are under a strict allocation as to how much water we can pump. On our farms there are 2 wells that the NRD has checked the water depth twice a year since they were dug in the early 70's. Some years it goes up, some years down and some years no change. At the current rate of decline, which is around 3-5 inches per year on average, at the depth our wells are drilled and the amount of water left below the pumps, we should not run out of water for over a thousand years. The area we are in is in a very good part of the ogallala formation. Much better than where we moved from in the SW portion of the panhandle of Tx, but, that is truly comparing apples to oranges. First off, the Ogallala formation down there is like a thimble full of water compared to the Ogallala formation in Ne. In the sandhills of central Ne., there are several spring fed rivers that originate there from the Ogallala formation. There is over a thousand feet of saturated thickness in that area.
To the OP. IMO, this journalist should include the vast amount of fresh water that flows into the oceans per year that could be harnessed and put to use refilling the aquifers that have been depleted. This is not a far fetched idea. I can remember my dad going to water meetings back in the 60's and some of the talk was about damming the Mississippi, laying pipe and pumping stations or irrigation canals similar to what they have in Ca. and bring the water to the areas in Tx, Ok and Ks and pump it back into the aquifers that have been depleted. It quite obviously would have to be an Army Corps of Engineers project, but, it could be done. But, that kind of project would take an enormous act of Congress and get the activists out of the discussion. Currently, the activists in Ca. have the flow of irrigation water diverted into the ocean because of the delta smelt that is supposed to be on the endangered species list. That, in my mind, is absolutely ridiculous. So, if journalists, activists or so called tree huggers are truly concerned about water depletion, they need to get their heads out of the sand and come up with a solution to keep the fresh waters of the US in the US.
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Groundwater
