The Invisible Crisis Threatening America’s Food Superpower Status | WSJ

– [Narrator] Unchecked Groundwater use is draining aquifers across the country, threatening drinking water and the nation status
as a food superpower. – Corn is the highest water
using crop there is out here. I don't think the farm could sustain it. – [Narrator] A wealth of underground water helped transform the
dusty Sandhills of Kansas into bountiful farmland. But now that water is disappearing. – I would say it's an existential threat. – [Narrator] Here's
why time is running out for parts of this critical Aquifer and what it reveals about
the larger Groundwater crisis unfolding across the country.

Garden City Kansas wind 30 miles per hour. Several times a year, Brownie Wilson travels
across Western Kansas to measure wells and
track the rapid decline of the Ogallala Aquifer, the
largest underground store of freshwater in the United States. – This is what we call an index well in that it records the water
levels on an hourly basis. – [Narrator] Since Wilson started working at the Kansas Geological
Survey more than 20 years ago, many of the wells have
declined by more than 100 feet. – So this well has dropped
about 150 feet since the 1950s.

– [Narrator] The Ogallala
Aquifer is the lifeblood of one of the world's most
abundant farming communities, stretching from Kansas to
Eastern Colorado and the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. Today it supports about 30% of all US crop and animal production. But in 2019, parts of the Aquifer reached their lowest levels
since the US Geological Survey started measuring more
than seven decades ago. The once abundant water
allowed farms like this one to grow cheap cattle feed
from alfalfa and corn. It fueled the feedlots and dairy farms that now dot the landscape of Southwest Kansas. – There would be no garden city if it wasn't for the beef industry. – [Narrator] Gina and
her brother Mark Gigot are farmers trying to preserve
the water below their land. For decades, their family has
used groundwater to grow corn and other types of row crops. The 9,000 acre farm has historically been one of Kansas' largest water users. – The only thing that Southwest
Kansas has is agriculture. And without agriculture, this is gonna be a total ghost town in full tumbleweeds weeds.

– [Narrator] Irrigation can
more than double the amount of corn grown per acre, but it comes at a cost requiring farmers to drain the Aquifer. Scarce rainfall in the region isn't enough to sustain industrial scale agriculture. – About 90% of the water that's used in our state comes
from a ground water supply, and 80 to 85% of that
is used for irrigation. And so there are certain areas
where we have lost 50, 60, 70% of what the Aquifer was there going back to the 1940s or 1950s.

– [Narrator] That water
could take centuries or millennia to replenish, meaning regions like West
Kansas risk losing access to those reserves in the
future when they might need it even more. A lifetime map of the Ogallala
Aquifer in Kansas reveals just how dire the situation is. – There are some areas
in West Central Kansas where the water table has
been drawn down so much that it no longer can support
irrigated agriculture.

– [Narrator] As farms
use up the groundwater, corn yields have declined in some areas like in Kansas Wichita County. In 2023, US Corn Growers
produced an average of 173 bushels per acre. But in Wichita, the yield
was less than half of that. Part of a decades long decline. To extend the life of the
Aquifer, the Gigot's have switched to less water intensive
crops like Triticale and Forage sorghum. To supplement their income, they've also planted
fields for cattle grazing. – We knew at that point
in time that we had to make a major change within our industry and it all surrounded around water.

– [Narrator] They've used
irrigation more strategically too. Soil moisture probes show them
the water content of the soil so they irrigate only
when the soil needs it. All of these measures allowed
them to cut their water use by about 26% over the last seven years. But some hydrology experts
say it will take even more drastic measures to save the Aquifer. – Estimates of what would
it take to slow down these groundwater declines
are ranging from 20 to 30 to 40 some places 50% reduction
in what is used each year. – [Narrator] Policy experts
say groundwater regulation is key to reaching those targets. – Groundwater laws across the country are really more of a patchwork. They're not consistent
from one state to another. – [Narrator] Burke
Griggs is a law professor at Washburn University specializing
in water law and policy. – If you own land above an
Aquifer, then you're entitled as a matter of owning that land to use a reasonable amount of groundwater.

– [Narrator] Throughout
most of the country, groundwater has been treated as an unlimited natural resource. Federal law plays almost
no role in regulating it, and many state laws allow
landowners to pump large amounts of groundwater for relatively low cost. – Starting in the 1940s, states issued more water rights than there was water to supply. The states have not
corrected the imbalance between the number of water
rights out there in the amount of water that's needed to supply them. – [Narrator] To address the problem, Kansas has implemented new
systems that encourage landowners to make voluntary water cuts. In some areas it worked. – In Northwestern Kansas, the irrigators have used new
groundwater laws and policies to really reduce the rate
of depletion of the Aquifer. But in southwestern
Kansas irrigators and farm and ranch owners have
not used these tools. – [Narrator] There is still resistance to change throughout agricultural
communities in the US.

– There is a a lot of farmers that believe this is their
water and they're gonna use it. It's allocated to them, they're gonna use it and
they're gonna pump it till someone tells 'em different. – [Narrator] And it's not
just an agriculture problem. Groundwater is also being drained
for cities, industrial use and new housing developments
like in Arizona. – Arizona is limiting new
construction around Phoenix as the state's water supply
continues to dwindle. – [Narrator] A 2024 study
revealed more than half of the Aquifers in the US have lost water over the last two decades. In parts of Utah, California, Florida, and Arizona, so much
water is being pumped up. It's causing roads to buckle, land to sink and fissures to open in the earth. – California has issues
where the so much water has been extracted, it's actually dropping by tens of feet in terms
of the water got removed and then the ground is
starting to sink down. – [Narrator] Over pumping
can also contaminate drinking water supplies like
on Long Island in New York. Salt water is encroaching on parts of the Aquifer that provide drinking water for over 3 million people.

Despite the mounting challenges, hydrology experts say there's still time to save these critical natural resources. – There's a window of
opportunity here for us to get this Aquifer onto
a more sustainable path, not sustainability, but on
a more sustainable path. And the key there is to reduce pumping. – [Narrator] Throughout the country, more and more cities are expanding wastewater
recycling programs, turning city sewage directly
into drinkable water. This strategy can be
used in agriculture too. – So people are waking
up to the public reality that groundwater is a public resource.

And we have seen political
initiatives across the West that show that groundwater
is not going to be the domain of the agricultural fiefdoms. That cities like Denver and
Kansas City and Albuquerque and Phoenix are just as concerned about the groundwater
problem as the farmers who use the bulk of the water supplies. (ominous music).

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