Kansas Is Showing What a Drier Future Looks Like
Last year’s severe drought finally convinced state officials they had to find a way to cut back water usage or watch towns start dying.
A wake-up call for Kansas.
Photographer: Natalia Favre/Bloomberg
There are no rivers running through northwest Kansas. But come spring, the region will turn green as farmers and ranchers pump water out of the vast Ogallala Aquifer that sprawls from north Texas to South Dakota. It took thousands of years for water to trickle into the aquifer. Now, thanks to over-pumping, some sections are running dry, and others will suffer the same fate in coming years and decades.
For northwest Kansas and other swaths of the plains states, the threat is existential. “If we exhaust our portion of the Ogallala, life in our part of Kansas is gone,” said Shannon Kenyon, a government water manager in Colby, a town in western Kansas, during a recent phone call. “No ag. No towns. No nothing without it.”