April 2009

U.S. Water News Online

OMAHA, Neb. — A new report says the vast underground reservoir popularly known as the Ogallala Aquifer has shrunk 9 percent since access was first developed nearly 60 years ago.

The U.S. Geological Survey says in a report issued recently that by 2007, the aquifer had dropped a foot on average in Nebraska since the early 1950s.

Most technical reports refer to the formation as the High Plains Aquifer because it sits beneath about 174,000 square miles of several Western and Plains states, running north-south from South Dakota and Wyoming down to Texas and New Mexico.

The aquifer supplies about 30 percent of the nation's groundwater used for irrigation. And the USGS says the aquifer provides drinking water to more than 80 percent of the people who live above it.