Today's intersection: groundwater depletion and the absence of public land

In 2022 this scribe did a 2000 mile loop to Vermillion, South Dakota and back again where the number of cattle feedlots in Kansas, Nebraska and eastern Colorado draining the Ogallala Aquifer is staggering. The Arkansas River was dry at Dodge City, Kansas and days later Gaia smashed through that entire region covering much of it in dust from haboobs. 

That June, thousands of confined feeder cattle valued at some $2000 per head died from unseasonably hot temperatures driven by anthropogenic warming. Ag producers have destroyed shelter belts to plant industrial crops that deplete aquifers and drought blows toxin-laden topsoil into downwind states. Spring wildfire seasons begin in eastern Colorado, western Kansas, the panhandles of Oklahoma, Texas and other Republican-held areas where moral hazard and poor ranching practices routinely decimate the high plains. 

Today, the Ogallala or High Plains Aquifer is being depleted six and a half times faster than its recharge rate and nearly all the groundwater sampled from it is contaminated with uranium and nitrates from industrial agriculture. Nebraska is buying land to build a Platte River canal to tap into Colorado's water.

Now, the disappearing water is threatening more than just agriculture. Rural communities are facing dire futures where water is no longer a certainty. Across the Ogallala, small towns and cities built around agriculture are facing a twisted threat: The very industry that made their communities might just eradicate them. Communities such as Dodge City offer a glimpse into the future of municipal water supplies in the region, said state Rep. Jim Minnix, a Republican who represents part of western Kansas and leads the House Water Committee. [Agriculture built these High Plains towns. Now, it might run them dry]

Yet, Republicans in red states are howling because the federal government and states are buying land to protect it from desertification.

Currently, Kansas is among only 15 states with no designated state source for conservation funding (Trust for Public Land, Kansas Conservation Funding Feasibility Study 2023). For a state like Kansas that regularly touts its support for farmers and how their operations feed the nation, such minor investments seem like low-hanging fruit. Investments in conservation not only benefit our state’s landscape and the native species that call it home, but contribute to the Kansas economy and improve the livelihoods of all residents. [Kansas needs designated funding for conservation or we leave federal resources on the table]

The Anthropocene is now and time to rewild some of the American West eventually becoming part of a Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge connecting the CM Russell in Montana along the Missouri River through North Dakota to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with corridors from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in the north and south to the Pecos River through eastern Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, western Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Learn more at the Colorado Sun.