Kansas water experts are sounding an alarm decades in the making: farmers and ranchers in the state’s western half must stop pumping more water out of a vast aquifer than nature puts back each year or risk the economic collapse of a region important to the U. S. food supply. That warning is setting up a big and messy fight over the Ogallala Aquifer for the Annual Session of the Kansas Legislature that opened yesterday, January 9th.
Governor Laura Kelly on the upcoming discussions:
Kansas produces more than 20% of the Nation’s wheat and has about 18% of the cattle being fed in the U. S.. The western third of Kansas is home to most of its portion of the Ogallala and accounts for 60% of the value of all Kansas crops and livestock. That’s possible because of the water.
