High Plains drought endangers agriculture, Ogallala Aquifer

April 1996

U.S. Water News Online

Lubbock, Texas -- Lack of rainfall in the high plains --
including western Kansas and Nebraska, eastern Colorado, and much of Oklahoma, New
Mexico, and Texas -- has already caused extensive damage to wheat crops in
the region, say agricultural experts here, and may lead to serious depletion
of the Ogallala Aquifer as irrigation demands for the region increase.
The drought, officials said, threatens cotton and other crops yet to be planted,
which will need heavy irrigation if it doesn't rain soon.

>From October 1 through the end of March, the high plains have
had an inch or less of rainfall, said Clay Salisbury, Assistant Professor of
Agronomy at Texas A & M University Research Center in Amarillo. Rainfall
here during this time of year is typically less than the period from May to August,
said Salisbury, which usually supplies the region with half its annual
rainfall. Still, he said, rainfall here for the past six months has been
four to five-and-a-half inches below normal.

This is particularly disastrous, said Bob Stewart, Director of
the Dry Land Agricultural Institute in Canyon, Texas, because the drought has
been compounded by unusual swings in extreme temperatures -- spurts
of extreme cold alternating with unseasonably warm weather, often accompanied
by hot, dry winds. This has further depleted any moisture that remained
in the soil from previous rains. In the past 55 years, said Stewart, this
region has had only one other season with so little rainfall. The last significant
rainfall came in September, but that moisture is gone now, he said.

This has not only played havoc with the wheat crop, which puts forth much of its growth during
the spring season, but is also a big concern to cotton
farmers who are preparing their fields for cotton planting. For
farmers who do not irrigate, he said, this has been particularly exasperating.
"Without subsoil moisture," Stewart said, "these
farmers must live from rain to rain."

Corn and sorghum farmers will have to irrigate heavily unless
rainfall increases substantially before planting time in April and May.

Stewart said that while farmers in Central Kansas had some crop
loss due to an usually long wet season last winter and spring, farmers without
access to irrigation in Texas and Oklahoma lost crops due to dry conditions
at that time -- conditions which are even more severe this year than last.

Depending on rainfall this spring, agricultural experts are predicting
a 30 to 40 percent reduction in the wheat crop for farmers who do not
irrigate, and a 10 to 15 percent reduction for irrigated crops. Week by
week the prospects change as weather patterns develop, experts say, but
as weeks pass without rain, the situation grows more critical because plants
must have enough moisture to get a decent start early in the growing cycle.

Areas that need the most rainfall are those that got the least
in September's storms. That includes areas north and west of Lubbock,
especially Cochran and Hockley counties. Extreme dry weather here,
and throughout the plains states, has been a key factor in the unusually
large number of grassland fires this spring.

In addition to fear over loss of crops, water officials have expressed
concern about the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, which is
the only underground source of water for the region. A pattern of
unusually dry weather since 1992 has accelerated the depletion rate
in the aquifer, said Wayne Wyatt, manager for the Ogallala Underground
Water ConservationDistrict.

The average annual decrease in water levels in the aquifer, the
main source for agriculture in the region, was less than half a foot until
the early to mid-'90s, Wyatt said. But in measurements taken at the district's
wells in 1994, the average drop was a little more than 2 feet, and the
drop went to 3 feet in 1995, he said. Irrigation in response to the drought is
largely responsible for the decrease, he said.

"It's a pretty serious change," Wyatt added. "It's
impossible to gauge exactly when the aquifer will run dry," he said, "but
the current lack ofrain will hasten that day."

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