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Speaking of sustainability - Ogallala aquifer

rockyridgefarm

rockyridgefarm

Well-known Member
We were discussing sustainability on here recently. I just heard on the radio farm news this morning that the aquifer has dropped another 2.5 feet this year. I was wondering what farmers in the 170,000 square miles that the aquifer sits are doing to increase their sustainability.

At some point the well on the pivot or the feedlot IS gonna go dry, right? I ran harvest crew in 2000. We went from Texas to Idaho. Dryland wheat was 15 bu/a. Irrigated wheat was 60-120 bu/a. Are you fellas gonna make it on 15 bu wheat?
 
I hate to be the one to have to say it, "You never want a drink of water till the well runs dry..." the Ogallala aquifer and some of the others have been dropping for years. The current fix is to just drill a deeper well!!!
Down here in Texas, I hear a lot of talk about sustainability but actually see little action. We are using up the aquifer much faster then it can recharge.
That the aquifer has dropped "only" another 2.5 feet this year is probably some improvement/reduction.
Water use by/in the big city's is a whole nuther discussion. :x

But your question is valid, how do you get above the current 15bu/a of
Dryland wheat when the pivot goes dry??

I don't have the answer, but I can appreciate the problem.
Andrew
 
It really isn't just one big bowl, some parts are in trouble now,
others are keeping up with recharge and good for centuries to
come.

We humans tend to talk a lot, but don't adapt until we need to.

And that is how it will be....

It will go dry in some areas, and folks will adapt as it happens
slowly.

Paul
 
The answer is as painful as it is simple: stop pumping. The water is much more valuable as drinking water than it is for irrigation. Many wells in northeastern Colorado have already been forced to shut down; expect more to come.

Modern no-till dryland farming practices can be quite profitable; skyrocketing land prices are evidence of that.
 
I can tell you first hand,if the Great Lakes States are talking about water management,it's 100% pure politics. There's no shortage of water here and never will be in any of our lifetimes. In a dry year when the irrigation wells are pumping full bore,you might have to go deeper,but the water is there and the aquifers will be replenished. I know guys who have horizontal wells and are running travelers from a depth of 20 feet.
 
i think its about the fact that la has talked of pumping water from the great lakes how the can do it is beyond me but it does raise the question if somebody does get short who has the rights to the water.
 
In a case like that there would be talk of water management,sure. We want to manage to keep it for ourselves.
If somebody's dumb enough to live in California,hey,that's their fault. Let'em deal with it.
 
We should be putting people to work building water treatment plants and putting water back underground instead of letting it flood out our downstream neighbors.
 
i think its called the great lakes water compact.they have already banned taking water for other areas .and the high plains is not that far .how far does nyc pump? it also raises the question of water levels for shipping think what a fight would break out if somebody wanted drinking water and we need water for shipping and then a dry year look at the trouble on the mississippi its good to talk now
 
Trouble with trying to pump it all the way to California,other than the obvious,is that to lay a pipeline of a size that would do any good,would take so long that the current drought would be over and two or three more would have come and gone,before it was done.
 
NYC's water is a gravity system. You can do that when you are on the ocean front and get your water from dams on higher ground. My memory (trust it if you want), is that NYC's water comes from about 100 miles away.
 
Isn't it being allocated already? A customer we harvested for in the Garden City area has had all of his irrigated land in corn for the feedlots but because of the lowering aquifer he's had to switch some of the pivots to wheat because it takes less water. Ten years ago or so I was asking some questions about irrigation to a farmer south of Phoenix. He was angrily telling me the water rights situation. The housing developments are growing beyond belief in his area, eating up many thousands of acres of farm land. Those developments are drilling down into the aquifer for their own water, or are using existing irrigation wells. If the water table goes below a certain level the farmers will have to shut down their wells but the houses can keep pumping. Just another example of urban encroachment.

Get on Google earth and look at the irrigated areas of our country. You'll be surprised at how many circles you see. The major areas I've seen personally are southern Arizona, western Kansas, eastern Colorado, Southwest Nebraska, and southeast Idaho. There are many more areas beside those. All they know is irrigation. They have no concept of what it's like to not irrigate. When I was on the harvest in Idaho I was chatting with a farmer and told him I'm a farmer, too, in Iowa. First thing he asked me was "who waters your crops while you're gone"? Jim
 
I was wondering if the farmers are looking at alternative forms of irrigation. Pivots were getting more and more common when I ran the crew. There was still quite a bit of flood irrigation, though. Pivots are more efficient than flood, but there's gotta be a more efficient form than pivots.... On a smaller scale, undergorund irrigation through drip tape is popular with vegetable gardeners. Is there much research into it, or is everyone just running faster toward the "We don't have a problem coming up" cliff?
 
I talked to a old guy in St Johns, he told me that the 1st thing his ancestors did when they got to mid Michigan was to dig drainage ditches. Southern Michigan would be one big swamp without drainage systems.
 
Isn't it an odd world, I spend many thousands of dollars to lay
tile in my ground to get rid of excess ground water, and they
do the opposite to try to add water. And way too much
elevation and distance between to average ourselves out.

Zoom in on the panhandle of Oklahoma, really interesting for a
wet clay farmer like me to see all those pivot circles, and the
farmsteads nestled in between the pivot circles. And the
different crops in them.

Then out west from there, toward Mexico, any little valley
along the mountains and rivers, has a smattering of pivots
wherever they can fit in between the mountains.

On a cold windy day, 0 degrees and dropping, 30mph winds,
that is something for me to do. A bit of education and
entertainment seeing how others do.

Sorry you dry land folk can't see my tile, although you can see
a few black trails through fields on new installations that the
camera caught.

Paul
 
NYC water comes from 19 reservoirs in the SE corner of the state and NYC owns 69 wells in Queens. Back in the 60s I used to drive past the Downsville Dam which I think is the Pepacton Res. I've almost seen the bottom the Res. because of low water
I was in Arizona a few years ago and south of Lake Havasu city, at that time you could see 2 large at least 25' diameter pipes coming out of the Colorado river heading toward California and there was talk of building more. I was told by residents that was waterpipes for LA.
 
just wondering these oil lines that are pumping how much do they move like the alaskan pipeline .the trouble is once a polatician gets a wild hair and starts making promices they cant keep. but who would have thought 20 years ago we would be buying water i can still remember bubblers
 
New York city gets it's water from the Catskill mountains. They have just about made it impossible to farm there with all there regulations on farm and septic run off. One of their dams is on the Schoharie river and you may remember the village of Schoharie was one of the places flooded out by hurricane Sandy. They own the water rights on every stream in those mountains.
 
Mark, you should mention that about about 98% of the cost of that 80% of water going to agriculture in CA is paid by the state and federal tax payers, not the users of the water.
 
Interesting question. I know here in MN there has been some talk about regulating irrigation but that's been going on for over 10 years and nothing has really been done.

Rick
 
To address the specific question of underground drip on a large scale, there has been some (how much?) interest in that on the Delmarva at least. Pivots dominate, but I"ve seen at least some subsurface drip installed on corn/bean fields.

Here, at present, it"s biggest advantage is that it works in non-circular fields. We have flat ground, but not the grid of the midwest so farmers here have many odd shaped fields that pivots struggle with.

As far as water efficiency, I hear it"s some better but I can"t say how much. It"s not an issue here. Pivots going in right and left and the water table seems to be holding strong (in fact, we ditch the land to keep it down in many places).
 
California has a very long and nasty past when it comes to water and water rights. I used to live in SoCal. Water and its control is one reason that they will never break Calif into two or more states. It is talked about all the time the people in the central and northern part of the state have been talking about breaking away from SoCal for years but the voter and power base is in the southern part of the state and they will never let go of the water from northern California. If you want to look into the past history of water and some of the dirty tricks that were played a great book is "Cadillac Desert" it documents the water wars of California.

"Water follows money! "
Andrew
 
(quoted from post at 13:37:38 01/22/14) Agriculture uses 80 percent of California's water.
Click to expand...

And a lot of it is not California's water but imported water.
How much water does Vegas use?
And they don't raise anything but hell.
 
(quoted from post at 16:45:16 01/22/14) Drinking water? Americans don't drink water anymore for the msot part - and when they do it comes from a bottle.
Click to expand...

but where does that water in their soft drinks and bottles come from? Same place.
 
They had serious problems in the mid 1800's until they got a decent water supply hooked up. I do recall that 10-12 years ago, maybe more, there was huge filtration plant proposed to be built in or under Van Cortland Park, I forget the details, but it was a massive project that was the center of controversy. Ironically, a neighbor directly to the west of a new building being constructed that I was the project manager on, was a staunch opponent, a righteous activist, fiercely engaged in opposing this project. I remember him well because we underpinned the old building he lived in, a co-op, which is another story, settling problems, boy was he a royal pain in the behind, other times a pleasure to speak to. A lot of residents were opposed to this, water is a big problem there, there is still a huge tunnel under construction for water supply if I am correct, I applied to several positions recently that were based out of kingston, NYC will certainly have its share from up here, same as LA.

The thing with the aquifers out west, its slow depletion, that is a scary thought, makes a place uninhabitable, people will migrate away. One thing we are thankful for here an aquifer that is plentiful, we get lots of rain, locally, in this neighborhood, we are all on wells, old time driller told my father, you'll never run out of water, he must have known a lot about the area.
 
Dams would have to be built to collect the water before it could run off - and you know that the environmentalists stopped the building of dams many years ago. You can blame them for the water shortage.
 

We just need more people to solve the water issues.
Have more babies!

Too many people is the problem instead of not enough water.
 
IH, thanks for bringing up two irrelevant points.

Last time I checked, Las Vegas was in Nevada. Or were you talking about Las Vegas, New Mexico?

As for the water that California takes from the Colorado River, almost 100 percent is used by agriculture, the Imperial Valley being below sea level. Aside from the water diverted from the Colorado River by the All-American Canal, California gets virtually all of its water from sources within the state. Which is to say that cities in California use California water.
 
Scott, tossing out facts here is like throwing gasoline on a campfire. But since it's too late to stop now, I'll add that the cities in California have been far more aggressive with their water conservation efforts than has agriculture.
 
The main concern about diverting water for the Great Lakes is lowering the lake levels to the point where navigation is a problem. Low lake levels are already an issue in some areas.

As far as shipping water out west, that's preposterous. Only someone who flunked high school geography would suggest such a thing. The water is needed most on the High Plains, which start roughly 2000 feet higher than the upper lakes and go up from there. Western farmers are only interested in water that's nearly free; they'll never pay the cost to pump water from the Great Lakes.
 
(quoted from post at 19:42:08 01/22/14) IH, thanks for bringing up two irrelevant points.

Last time I checked, Las Vegas was in Nevada. Or were you talking about Las Vegas, New Mexico?

As for the water that California takes from the Colorado River, almost 100 percent is used by agriculture, the Imperial Valley being below sea level. Aside from the water diverted from the Colorado River by the All-American Canal, California gets virtually all of its water from sources within the state. Which is to say that cities in California use California water.
Click to expand...

First thing to pop up on google when I asked where does California get it's water.

"Southern California imports more than half of its water supply through the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Colorado River Aqueduct, and the State Water Project."

"
 
There is no state called "Southern California". Only one known as California. Of those three water projects, only the LA Aqueduct diverts water from the Colorado River. The other two get their water entirely from within the state.
 
I know of 2 farmers that don't irrigate anymore. One pumped from a lake & the other from a river. Can't do that anymore. Stearns and Todd counties in Mn.
 
Ya know, drove through there couple times a year for many years, only saw the couple along the road.

Quite the setups there, you got that right. Must be good sand ground, all the lakes around it, just pour the water through it and recycle?

I presume along with rotations, that would be potato ground?

Big fire up that way in Purham, potato warehouse, McDonald's might have a blip in their supply.

Paul
 
Mn. is the land of 10,000 lakes. They drain to the north by the Red river, south by the Mississippi and also to lake Superior. Many lakes could be lowered over winter & would catch up again in the spring thaw.
 
And here we set in North Central Iowa and can't get
rid of water. Offered to put a new center pivot up
for the neighbors if they'd let us pump our waste
water from an egg processor on their land, no
takers for free water or the Nitrogen that'd go
with it.
 
Wisbaker, in the desert of Idaho the farmers have no concept of what draining excess water off the land is, but I'm about as dumb as a person can be when it comes to irrigation. When I mentioned to this one farmer in Idaho the fact that we drain it off with drainage tiles I had to explain to him what a drainage tile was, how big it is, how deep it's buried, how far apart the lines are spaced and where they drain to. And they drain to a drainage ditch that carries the water away, not an irrigation ditch that brings it in. We in the wet states don't realize how lucky we are to have an excess of water. Jim
 
Mark, I disagree about facts being like gas on a campfire. It is more like train cars of Bakken crude oil from North Dakota crashing and burning next to your house. I know all about Hetch Hetchey. I believe it, and all of the other water projects, should be privitized and the water sold to the highest bidder. The American way, or what I want it to be.
 
(quoted from post at 19:00:56 01/22/14) And here we set in North Central Iowa and can't get
rid of water. Offered to put a new center pivot up
for the neighbors if they'd let us pump our waste
water from an egg processor on their land, no
takers for free water or the Nitrogen that'd go
with it.
Click to expand...

Well just lay a pipeline to here. I'll let you pump that on my land!

Rick
 
(quoted from post at 13:15:22 01/22/14) New York city gets it's water from the Catskill mountains. They have just about made it impossible to farm there with all there regulations on farm and septic run off. One of their dams is on the Schoharie river and you may remember the village of Schoharie was one of the places flooded out by hurricane Sandy. They own the water rights on every stream in those mountains.
Click to expand...

Which is why NYC/LI and all the counties up to about Albany should be their own State. Cut them off and let the rest of the State flourish, move the capitol to Syracuse, start over again. Maybe then NY State would return to sanity.
 
One of the biggest things we can all to do replenish our aquifers is to stop paving everything and running rain water off to storm drains and the oceans. Look at any city, town or village and you won't see much swampland anymore. That's how the water gets filtered and back into the ground. But people don't want mosquitoes, muskrats and wasteland. They want malls and paved ground. Stupid.
 
(quoted from post at 11:37:38 01/22/14) Agriculture uses 80 percent of California's water.
Click to expand...

Any idea on how much of the 20% left goes to irrigating the yard grass? If everyone in the west would eliminate watering their front and/or backyards it would make a big difference in the available water - My 2¢
 
(quoted from post at 12:11:56 01/23/14) One of the biggest things we can all to do replenish our aquifers is to stop paving everything and running rain water off to storm drains and the oceans. Look at any city, town or village and you won't see much swampland anymore. That's how the water gets filtered and back into the ground. But people don't want mosquitoes, muskrats and wasteland. They want malls and paved ground. Stupid.
Click to expand...
For the past 25+ years every new residential, commercial, and industrial development in this county has been required to have a detention pond to help replenish the aquifer.
 
(quoted from post at 11:20:54 01/23/14)
(quoted from post at 12:11:56 01/23/14) One of the biggest things we can all to do replenish our aquifers is to stop paving everything and running rain water off to storm drains and the oceans. Look at any city, town or village and you won't see much swampland anymore. That's how the water gets filtered and back into the ground. But people don't want mosquitoes, muskrats and wasteland. They want malls and paved ground. Stupid.
Click to expand...
For the past 25+ years every new residential, commercial, and industrial development in this county has been required to have a detention pond to help replenish the aquifer.
Click to expand...

Where? Not anywhere near me, that's for sure. What county in what state, I imagine it makes a huge difference on where youa re. Good to hear either way.
 
Where? Not anywhere near me, that's for sure. What county in what state, I imagine it makes a huge difference on where youa re. Good to hear either way.
Click to expand...
Most any county in NE IL has those requirements. Many places have restrictions on what percentage of a property can have improvements as well. For instance a lot in a subdivision can only be covered 50% by a house, garage, pavement, etc. Decks, above ground pools, non-permanent storage sheds don't count towards the 50%.
 
(quoted from post at 07:28:02 01/24/14)
Where? Not anywhere near me, that's for sure. What county in what state, I imagine it makes a huge difference on where youa re. Good to hear either way.
Click to expand...
Most any county in NE IL has those requirements. Many places have restrictions on what percentage of a property can have improvements as well. For instance a lot in a subdivision can only be covered 50% by a house, garage, pavement, etc. Decks, above ground pools, non-permanent storage sheds don't count towards the 50%.
Click to expand...

Right, the midwest is different than the northeast. All those zoning rules though! Wow! Glad I live in the sticks.
 
Right, the midwest is different than the northeast. All those zoning rules though! Wow! Glad I live in the sticks.
Click to expand...

Building and zoning rules have gotten pretty insane here. In one area town the building and zoning people noticed most of the new houses were some shade of tan. They must not have liked earth tones because they made a rule that similar exterior colors had to be a minimum of 3 houses apart. That one actually got over turned when the developers had there customers complain to the village.

We built a few houses in a ritzy suburb south of Chicago. The next door neighbor of a house we were building was a doctor. The doc had his front yard landscaped. The landscape inspector went there to do a final inspection. He kept going from his car where he had several books laid out on the hood, then back to two trees in the front yard. Then he radioed for back up. Pretty soon there were three landscape inspectors, all with several books with pictures of trees on the hoods of their cars. They were using calipers to measure the tree trunks at various heights. They picked leaves off the trees to compare with pictures of leaves in their books. Final verdict....not an approved species of tree, and the caliper size was 1/4" too small. They had to be replaced.

My sis and bil had a small farm in western NY. They rented the tillable land to a neighbor. They got a notice from a state agency that they had to cease farming a wetlands area on their farm. They set up a meeting with someone from the state agency that sent the letter. They were under the impression the state was talking about a swamp area. Nope. More on that in a bit. They were talking about a marginal that some years was tillable but not other years because of moisture. It was dry the year the state guy was there but he identified it as wetlands because of some weeds that grew there. My bil pulled one of the weeds and said, I can't farm this area because of this weed? The state guy got very upset and warned my bil to never kill those weeds. So was the state concerned about preserving wetlands or were they concerned about protecting the plant life? Back to the swamp...at one point the tenant farmer about had my bil talked into draining it so it could be farmed. Then my bil decided he'd rather have a pond. The state conservation guy told him it couldn't be drained, and it couldn't be dug out for a pond because it would drain the wetlands area. Think about that. If the reason to protect wetlands is to replenish the aquifer, then turning the swamp into a pond would actually hep replenish the aquifer. Turns out the state was actually interested in preserving the plant life because it attracted migratory birds. My bil is nearing retirement age. With all the government bs he's had to deal with at work and with the farm in NY and another property in MA it's no wonder he wants to live on a house boat.
 
I getcha Pops, and meanwhile if your BIL had contacted USDA they might well have come in and dug potholes in the wet spots and told the State to kiss off! I've seen it happen.
 
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