U.S. Water News Online
WICHITA, Kan. -- While Clyde and Glenda Schinnerer were taking a shower or doing laundry, the water at times would just stop flowing at their Scott County farm in western Kansas.
s Eventually, water would seep back into their well from the Ogallala Aquifer and the water pump would start again -- at least for awhile.
For months, the Schinnerers made do with a well drying up because they had lived on their farm since their marriage in 1955. By 1979, they knew it would be far too expensive to try to get a new water supply. Even if they could afford it, they would not know how long it might last.
Reluctantly, they moved into town, to Scott City.
``We liked it on the farm, always loved to be on the farm,'' he said. ``The water was the main thing -- about the only thing, really.''
Like others in the Scott City area, the Schinnerers experienced what some experts say is the shape of things to come.
``If you want to know the future, talk to the people in Scott County. They are experiencing the future already,'' said Rex Buchanan, associate director of the Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas.
During the past 20 years, 5 percent of the aquifer beneath much of western Kansas has fallen to levels of less than 30 feet of saturated thickness -- not enough water for large-scale irrigation, he said.
Another 4 percent will fall into that category within the next 25 years at current usage rates, Buchanan said. About 40 percent of the aquifer will not last for more than 100 years at current usage.
Just exactly how long all that takes depends on factors in 10-20 years that nobody can predict: the price of corn, the climate, natural gas costs.
``There is this sense -- particularly in eastern Kansas -- that one day everybody is going to wake up and there isn't going to be any water out there,'' Buchanan said.
What really happens is a gradual cut back of large-scale irrigation, rather than some overnight change, he said.
People change their irrigation practices in response to water levels. They scale down and adopt more conservation measures. They use irrigation to supplement rain, rather than all the time. They also change planting practices.
For instance, Schinnerer now leases out his acres. Once the land grew thirsty corn under irrigation; now it's more drought-tolerant wheat and grain sorghum -- all on dryland acres.
The shift will happen at different rates depending on location and use. In some places, such as Wichita County, the aquifer already is considered depleted. But in other parts of the state such as southwest Kansas, there's enough water in the aquifer for decades.
At the front lines of the declining groundwater battle is Western Kansas Groundwater Management District No. 1, which includes parts of Scott, Lane, Wichita, Greeley and Wallace counties -- some of the most depleted parts of the aquifer.
Farmers started flood irrigating the area in the early 1900s -- long before technological advances in the 1950s and 1960s led to dramatic increases in large-scale pumping.
It's here the impacts of a declining aquifer are most keenly felt and where some see a glimpse of the aquifer's future.
As GMD No. 1 manager, Keith Lebbin works to stop the aquifer's decline without hurting the local economy. He said the aquifer's average saturated thickness in the district is 46 feet.
``We have had areas completely dewatered that have gone back to dryland, not a massive amount of acres, but some,'' he said. ``We are relatively shallow in thickness as far as the aquifer is concerned.''
Of 650,000 acres authorized to irrigate in GMD No. 1, fewer than 300,000 acres are irrigated because so little water remains, Lebbin said.
``It has been going on like a cancer that spreads over time,'' he said.
Communities in west-central Kansas are scrambling to buy additional water rights as they deal with not just problems of water quantity, but increasingly of water quality. Nitrate levels are high.
``As the saturated thickness gets less, what is there is of poor quality,'' Lebbin said. ``Whatever has been done on the surface is showing up in the groundwater -- leaking underground tanks, chemicals used on farmland.''
GMD No. 1 has tried to do its job by such things as requiring all irrigation wells to be metered so nobody uses more water than they are entitled.
One thing that would help slow the decline would be a federal water buyout program that pays people not to irrigate, Lesbian said.
The Farm Service Agency has a small program to do that, but the idea hasn't been widely accepted because of the low payments.
``There is a whole range of things you can do, but they have to be legal and they have to take into account the economic impact and political realities,'' Buchanan said. ``People have built a livelihood around irrigation -- you can't say we are going to stop irrigation overnight.''
Looking back, Schinnerer said the area would not be in the tough position it is now with groundwater declines if farmers had the kind of leadership and control then that is now in place with GMD No. 1.
``We wouldn't have wasted nearly as much water -- we overpumped our wells,'' he said.
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