Drought in Kansas Damages Aquifers

Kansas drought in 2011 has caused severe declines in groundwater levels

Ogallala Aquifer in southwest Kansas dropped an average 3.78 feet in 2011, Kansas Geological Survey said. That’s compared to a decline of 3 feet in 2010 and 1.39 feet in 2009.

Disaster Calendar 2012 – March 30

Mass die-offs resulting from human impact and the planetary response to the anthropogenic assault could occur by early 2016.  SYMBOLIC COUNTDOWN: 1,447 Days Left to the ‘Worst Day’ in Human History

• Kansas, USA.  Kansas drought in 2011 has caused severe declines in groundwater levels.

U.S. Seasonal Drought Map.

• • The drought began in the fall of 2010.
  • Much of Kansas received between 25 to 50 percent of normal rainfall.
  • Ogallala Aquifer in southwest Kansas dropped an average 3.78 feet in 2011, Kansas Geological Survey said. That’s compared to a decline of 3 feet in 2010 and 1.39 feet in 2009.
  • Thew is a nearly 174,000-square-mile underground cache of water that spreads across parts of Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming – one of the largest freshwater aquifers in the world.
  • “The growing season was probably the worst since the 1930s,” said Kansas Geological Survey water-data manager. “It was just awful.”
  • “It’s a change from 80 years ago when, during the Great Depression, hundreds, if not thousands, of farmers went out of business after drought and dust storms damaged their crops. Back then, there was little irrigation relief or knowledge of the magnitude of the reservoir underneath the surface,” said a report.
  • The Ogallala Aquifer (aka, the High Plains Aquifer,) is one of the world’s largest aquifers, covering an area of about 450,000 km² (174,000 mi²).
  • Named after the town of Ogallala, Nebraska, the vast but shallow aquifer is located beneath the Great Plains covering portion of eight states of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota.
  • Ogallala yields about 30 percent of the ground water used for irrigation in the U.S.
  • The aquifer has been declining for decades
  • “High Plains ground water is used primarily to grow crops for the Nation; irrigation accounts for 94 percent of the ground-water use. The second largest ground-water use, 418 million gallons per day (Mgal/day), is for domestic drinking water. Almost 2 million people rely on the High Plains aquifer for their drinking water. Surface water is used for drinking water primarily in the larger cities near the periphery of the High Plains aquifer (Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Lubbock, Odessa, and Amarillo, Texas). Other uses of ground water include livestock (222 Mgal/day), mining (210 Mgal/day), and industry (155 Mgal/day).” USGS said.

Water-level changes in the High Plains aquifer, predevelopment to 2005 (modified from McGuire, 2007). Map shows the areas of substantial water-level changes in the aquifer from the time prior to substantial ground-water irrigation development (predevelopment or about 1950) to 2005 Source: USGS

Water-Level Changes, Predevelopment to 2005

• The map of water-level changes in the High Plains aquifer from predevelopment to 2005  was generated using methods described by McGuire (2007). The map is based on water levels from 3,682 wells, which were measured in predevelopment and in 2005, and other previously published data in areas with few predevelopment water levels. The areas with few predevelopment water levels are in the central part of the Nebraska Panhandle, west-central Nebraska, and southeastern Wyoming.

• The water-level changes from predevelopment to 2005 ranged between a rise of 84 feet and a decline of 277 feet. Area-weighted, average water-level change from predevelopment to 2005 was a decline of 12.8 feet. Approximately 25 percent of the aquifer area had more than 10 feet of water-level decline from predevelopment to 2005; 17 percent had more than 25 feet of water-level decline, and 9 percent had more than 50 feet of water-level decline. Approximately 2 percent of the aquifer area had more than 10 feet of water-level rise from predevelopment to 2005 (McGuire, 2007).

Change in Water in Storage, Predevelopment to 2005

• Total water in storage in 2005 was about 2,925 million acre-feet, which was a decline of about 253 million acre-feet (or 9 percent) since predevelopment. Water in storage for predevelopment was inferred from water in storage in 2000 and water-level changes from predevelopment to 2000. Changes in storage prior to predevelopment were not estimated (McGuire, 2007).

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United States of Arrests

Congratulations America: Soon None Would Oppose!

When 1200 Americans are arrested opposing the Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline

“It was the most extraordinary citizen organizing feat in recent White House history. Over 1200 Americans from 50 states came to Washington and were arrested in front of the White House to demonstrate their opposition to a forthcoming Obama approval of the Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada down to the Gulf Coast. ” Said Ralph Nader.

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Disaster Calendar 2011 – September 17

[September 17, 2011]  Mass die-offs resulting from human impact and the planetary response to the anthropogenic assault could occur by early 2016.  SYMBOLIC COUNTDOWN: 1,642 Days Left to the ‘Worst Day’ in Human History

• The White House, Washington, DC. More than 1200 Americans from 50 states were arrested in front of the White House demonstrating against Obama’s approval of the Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada all the way to the Gulf Coast.

Obama’s Pipeline Quagmire by Ralph Nader

It was the most extraordinary citizen organizing feat in recent White House history. Over 1200 Americans from 50 states came to Washington and were arrested in front of the White House to demonstrate their opposition to a forthcoming Obama approval of the Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada down to the Gulf Coast.

Anyone who has tried to mobilize people in open non-violent civil disobedience knows how hard it is to have that many people pay their way to Washington to join a select group of civic champions. The first round of arrestees – about 100 of them – were brought to a jail and kept on cement floors for 52 hours – presumably, said one guard, on orders from above to discourage those who were slated to follow this first wave in the two weeks ending September 3, 2011.

The Keystone XL pipeline project – owned by a consortium of oil companies — is a many faceted abomination. It will, if constructed, take its raw, tar sands carbon down through the agricultural heartland of the United States — through the Missouri and Niobrara Rivers, the great Ogallala aquifer, fragile natural habitats and Native American lands. Major breaks and accidents on pipelines — four of them with loss of human life— have occurred just in the past year from California to Pennsylvania, including a recent, major Exxon/Mobile pipeline rupture which resulted in many gallons of oil spilling into the Yellowstone River.

The Office of Pipeline Safety in the Department of Transportation has been a pitiful rubberstamp patsy for the pipeline industry for 40 years. There are larger objections – a huge contribution to greenhouse gases and further expansion of the destruction of northern Albertan terrain, forests and water – expected to cover an area the size of Florida.

Furthermore, as the Energy Department report on Keystone XL pointed out, decreasing demand for petroleum through advances in fuel efficiency is the major way to reduce reliance on imported oil with or without the pipeline. There is no assurance whatsoever that the refined tar sands oil in Gulf Coast refineries will even get to the motorists here. They can be exported more profitably to Europe and South America.

In ads on Washington, D.C.’s WTOP news station, the industry is claiming that the project will create more than 100,000 jobs. They cannot substantiate this figure. It is vastly exaggerated. TransCanada’s permit application for Keystone XL to the U.S. State Department estimated a “peak workforce of approximately 3,500 to 4,200 construction personnel” to build the pipeline.

The Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and the Transport Workers Union (TWU) oppose the pipeline. In their August 2011 statement they said: “We need jobs, but not ones based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sands oil […] Many jobs could be created in energy conservation, upgrading the grid, maintaining and expanding public transportation — jobs that can help us reduce air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and improve energy efficiency.”

The demonstrators before the White House, led by prominent environmentalist Bill McKibben and other stalwarts, focused on President Obama because he and he alone will make the decision either for or against building what they call “North America’s biggest carbon bomb.” He does not have to ask Congress.

Already the State Department, in their latest report, is moving to recommend approval. The demonstrators and their supporters, including leaders of the Native American Dene tribe in Canada and the Lakota nation in the U.S., filled much of the area in front of the White House and Lafayette Square. On September 2, I went down to express my support for their cause. Assistants to Mr. McKibben asked me to speak at the final rally at the square on Saturday. I agreed. At 6:25 p.m. we received an e-mail from Daniel Kessler withdrawing their invitation because of “how packed our schedule already is. We’d love to have Ralph there in any other capacity, including participating in the protest.”

The next day, many of the speakers went way over their allotted five to six minute time slots. Observers told me that there were to be no criticisms of Barack Obama. McKibben wore an Obama pin on the stage. Obama t-shirts were seen out in the crowd. McKibben did not want their efforts to be “marginalized” by criticizing the President, which they expected I would do. He said that “he would not do Obama the favor” of criticizing him.

To each one’s own strategy. I do not believe McKibben’s strategy is up to the brilliance of his tactics involving the mass arrests. (Which by the way received deplorably little mass media coverage).

Obama believes that those demonstrators and their followers around the country are his voters (they were in 2008) and that they have nowhere to go in 2012. So long as environmentalists do not find a way to disabuse him of this impression long before Election Day, they should get ready for an Obama approval of the Keystone XL monstrosity. Ralph Nader

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