Groundwater resources crisis in the United States

The United States has been pumping its aquifers at a unsustainable rate, particularly in the Midwest, South and California. In addition, the expansion of fracking technologies has increased the exhaustion of the groundwater resources. Here we describe the causes and consecuences in the largest aquifer (Ogallala) and in California.

The Ogallala aquifer

The Ogallala aquifer is one of the largest and most heavily used groundwater reservoirs on Earth. Most of the water for irrigated farming in Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Nebraska comes from this huge underground basin. Continued overextraction has gradually reduced

pressure in the aquifer — wells are no longer artesian, water levels have dropped, and pumping costs have increased. Lately, awareness of a vanishing resource has raised questions about the need to respect limits of renewability to protect the water resource.

Traditionally, sustainability of groundwater was not a concern in the US midwest. An example of the philosophy inspiring groundwater policy and decision-making in the field of resource management

during the 1950s and 1960s (and today in some cases) is supplied by Felix Sparks, former head of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. When asked about the future of groundwater in the state, he

responded with a rhetorical question: “What are you going to do with all that water? Leave it in the ground?” The state engineer in charge of water in New Mexico (Stephen Reynolds) further illustrated

this line of thought: “We made a conscious decision to mine out our share of the Ogallala in a period of 25 to 40 years” (see Reisner 1986).

According to this approach, the solution to water scarcity was more water projects, including some that were very expensive and resulted in returns as low as 5% in economic benefits.

In Reno, Nevada, gambling and prostitution are legal, but for a long time water-metering was against the law.

The Colorado river basin is largely an artificial system; aquatic life has been affected both in the river and in the Gulf of California; its flow has been curtailed; and its aquifers have been directly or indirectly modified, reducing the sustainability of the systems. The model of the Colorado River is another example of inadequate and nonparticipatory use of natural

resources. We can only hope that the 21st century will see some of the worst effects of these pharaonic, 20th century hydroworks undone.

The aquifers of the western United States

Similar problems of widespread and thoughtless interference with nature can be observed in the aquifers and basins of central California. At the beginning of the century, almost all of California’s water came from groundwater sources; now the proportion is 40%. The farmers of the central valley (Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys) overused the water and, by the 1930s, the farming economy was approaching collapse. The farmers convinced the legislature to

authorize the Central Valley Project, by far the largest water project in the world; it was partially financed by the Roosevelt government. In the 1960s, the California Water Project, of similar size, was implemented. Together, these projects provide eight times the amount of water needed for the city of New York.

Despite the additional water, however, overuse continued because, instead of merely substituting the new sources for the older, over-exploited sources, farmers opened up more land for cultivation. Estimates of the amount used over the renewal capacity of the aquifers in California range as high as 3 billion cubic metres per year, causing a growing water crisis throughout the state. The lack of regulation pertaining to groundwater pumping, a traditional “absent” feature of the California legal system, has probably been a major factor contributing to the current critical situation. However, cases of overexploitation of groundwater resources are not restricted to California or the United States. They can be found worldwide from the valley of Mexico to Bangkok, and from Manila to Havana.

In addition there is fracking

To these facts that are affecting seriously groundwater availability in most of the country, we must add the deleterious impact of fracking. We will write on this issue in our next article on the subject.