Depleting our Groundwater Supplies

Whenever you pump water from a well it has to be balanced by a loss of water from storage in the groundwater aquifer. Groundwater is recharged from rain and sources of surface infiltration. The response of a groundwater aquifer to pumping depends on whether the aquifer is confined or unconfined, how much water is pumped and the geology of the area. If too much water is pumped, water tables can drop in unconfined aquifers, water pressure fall in confined aquifers, surface water and ecology could be impacted and in some locations with fine grained soils compaction and subsidence can take place. The U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) Groundwater Resources Program is conducting large-scale multiyear regional studies of groundwater availability in the United States. The USGS has found that the volume of groundwater stored in the earth is decreasing in many regions of the United States. The water level is falling in many areas and if this continues we could deplete our groundwater. The extent of groundwater level declines across the United States has not been monitored before now. The most recent effort to summarize the declines in artesian water levels or water tables was in 1983. Since that time our demands on the groundwater have increased and our understanding of groundwater has improved. It is now very clear we are running a groundwater deficit.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1323/pdf/Circular1323_book_508.pdf

Although humans have been digging wells and tunnels for water supply for thousands of years, extensive use of ground water is relatively recent, and coincides with more effective drilling and pumping technologies during the past 75 years. The USGS is trying to determine how much ground water we have, how fast groundwater supplies are running out and where climate and human development might combine to create critical problem areas. Large-scale development and exploitation of ground-water resources and the accompanying declines in ground-water levels and other effects of pumping has led to concerns about the future availability of ground water to meet domestic, agricultural, industrial, and environmental needs. Water availability and how we manage water resources will determine the future of our nation.
http://water.usgs.gov/ogw/gwrp/activities/overview-pubs.html

During the past century, several ground-water assessments have been completed by the USGS. These national and regional evaluations have increased our knowledge about roundwater resources and groundwater in general. Our understanding of groundwater and its how it is connected to surface-water systems has expanded and new methods and technologies for resource assessment have been developed and with it the issues of concern have changed. Environmental decision making has grown more complex with increased knowledge about groundwater and its role in estuaries. Water is necessary for human use and environmental protection and preservation.

The USGS has been using long-term groundwater monitoring data, combined with groundwater models, to improve our understanding of the storage and flow of groundwater. This task is quite difficult, groundwater is not easily observed and not all the water pumped is consumed. When water is pumped from the ground and used, the water molecules are not destroyed; the water is simply moved to different places. Consumed water is assumed to be evaporated, transpired, incorporated into products or crops, consumed by humans or livestock, or otherwise removed from the immediate water environment. The rest of the water goes back into the environment, such as sewage disposal into streams, septic leaching fields back into the ground and additional recharge from excess irrigation. Even the water consumed, however, is not really lost; it goes into the atmosphere or into products or living tissue. When analyzing the amount of ground-water available, it is important to consider consumptive use and return flow as well as withdrawals.

The growing population and the effects of recent droughts have made the need for an updated status on the availability of the groundwater necessary. For over 60 years the USGS has worked with state and local agencies to compile estimates of groundwater and surface-water withdrawals for the Nation at 5-year intervals. Some water-use data, such as public supply for household uses and withdrawals by some industrial users, are obtained by direct measurement. Other permitted uses are estimated as the amount reported or allowed by permit. Many uses, such as private drinking water wells, irrigation, and some industries, are estimated. This data has been used to see how groundwater demand has changed over time. This information has been combined with water level measurement and monitoring to develop computer models and tools to forecast groundwater aquifer response to human and environmental stressors like groundwater pumping, diversion of surface water, irrigation and droughts.

The USGS has compiled all this data to try and get an idea of what our water resources are and what our demands for groundwater are. Groundwater provides half our drinking water and is essential to the vitality of agriculture and industry, as well as to the health of rivers, wetlands, and estuaries throughout the country. We need to have a sustainable water budget for the nation’s groundwater aquifer systems; however, sustainable budgets do not appear to be our nation’s strong point. This is compounded by the fact that ground-water management decisions in the United States are made at a local level. Many aquifer systems cross these political boundaries, making appropriate management extremely difficult even within our own nation.

Farm Subsidies, Water Policy and Food in America

Recently, a friend of mine drew my attention to the fact that rice is cultivated in California. In the semi-arid land of California with an impending water crisis where water is allocated, and allocations cut to protect endangered habitats and species, there are rice patties. This seemingly irrational behavior is the result of the agriculture system that has evolved in the United States under farm subsidies and water allocations. Farmers do not pay the full resource and environmental price of the federally managed irrigation systems (especially if local regulations limiting the pumping of groundwater are not effectively enforced). Farm subsidies have created incentives for water-intensive cultivation in the United States. In the United States farm subsidies over the years have become a maze of programs layered on top of each other involving food assistance, rural sewage, research and extension programs, but at their core the farm programs are subsidized commodity programs that pay predominately large high income landowners based on production or a history of production of eligible crops on land that is classified as eligible.

Commodity payments, what are commonly thought of as farm subsidies are income payments made to farmers or land owners who may no longer farm the land and simply collect payments from tenant farmers or let the land stand idle. Almost 93% of the payments are made for a small list of crops- cotton (22.3%), rice (7.3%), wheat (9.5%), corn (43.5%), soybeans (5.5%), and other grains and oilseeds (4.2%). These payments do not encourage the cultivation of fruits and vegetables, water conservation, or resource protection. These payments do not help the rural poor. These payments are predominantly made to wealthy farmers. These payments are fiercely protected by the congressional representation of the largest recipients. Not surprisingly, after four generations, agricultural sector has changed dramatically and the program beneficiaries lobby and co-opt other groups for support. By including popular but poorly funded programs for conservation and research. According to the Environmental Working Group, who has tracked and analyzed farm subsidies since the 1990’s ten states, Texas, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska, California, South Dakota and Missouri, accounted for 56% of total subsidies in 2009. Only in the bizarre universe of farm subsidies could you find payments to wealthy landowners to actually grow rice in an arid environment where there is talk of rationing water to people.

The subsidies essentially began during the agricultural price collapse in the 1920’s after the First World War with the creation in 1929 of the Agricultural Marketing Act and during the Great Depression of the 20th century (as opposed to the Great Recession of our own century) the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act. This was a time when 25% of America resided on farms and there were reported to be more than 6,000,000 small farms. The country was experiencing a great economic contraction and the Plains of North America was struck by successive droughts in the 1920s and 1930’s that resulted in hundreds of thousands of the homesteaders who had settled the prairie being displaced from the farms. The images of the “Dust Bowl” were poignant and the need acute. The Agricultural Marketing Act created the Farm Board, which fixed price floors for wheat and cotton. If market prices went below 80 cents a bushel for wheat and 20 cents a pound for cotton, the federal government would step in to buy the crop, pay to store it, and hope to resell it later for a decent price. After the creation of the Farm Board, many farmers shifted their entire crop production to wheat or cotton because those crops were protected and now provided a secure income. The resulting overproduction forced down the prices of both crops below the price floors. The government had to buy and store tremendous amounts of wheat and cotton, exhausting the programs entire funding. Instead of ending the program as a failed experiment, Congress added to the program creating the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. This act tried to control oversupply by paying farmers not to produce. As for prices, they would be pegged to the purchasing power of farm prices in 1910 just before World War I.

This modification failed to solve the problem so the farm subsidies and control began on an eight decade journey to find the “right” incentive formula. It is no longer known what the goal of these programs is, but the nature and character of the American farm (and possibly the American diet) has been irrevocably changed by these Congressional programs. The beneficiaries of the subsidies have changed as agriculture in the United States has changed. In the 1930s, about 25% of the country's population resided on the nation's 6,000,000 small farms. In 2010 it is estimated that the $286 billion in farm sales is divided amongst 1.9 million farmers and that agriculture represents between 1 and 2% of gross domestic product even as agricultural output has grown. United States is a net exporter of food and typical American family spends 10% of their income on food. In 2009 according to the Environmental Working Group, subsidies paid for cotton, rice, corn, wheat and livestock, totaled $13 billion dollars a minor fraction of the budget. However, suddenly eliminating the farm subsidies seems almost impossible. Policy makers are reluctant eliminate the subsidies because they fear the consequences to farm employment and food prices.

Meanwhile, the United States has growing regional water problems. When agricultural land is irrigated, the water balance in nature is altered. The environmental impact of an irrigation system is dependent on the nature of the water source, the quality of water, the method of delivery and the local geology and climate. Irrigation of lands can destroy them through subsidence or the buildup of salt in the land and groundwater. Irrigation accounted for 65% of total freshwater withdrawals in the United States excluding thermo-electric power. Changes in climate or weather patterns and growth in population may increase demand for irrigation water because the Agricultural subsidy system creates resistance to changes in irrigation style and patterns. Hotter, drier summers increase pressures on water resources, but our agricultural sector does not respond easily to these changes. Second, recent demand for bio-energy has been met using corn crops from states that irrigate.

Water pricing and farm subsidies have been used in the past to solve economic and social problems. Unfortunately, we have not been able to achieve our conflicting economic, environmental and social goals through subsidies and price controls. Water rights must be owned and cannot exceed the sustainable rate of withdrawal. In California there is no longer any relationship between the water and the land, they have destroyed the natural ecology of water rich areas to deliver the water to Los Angeles, San Francisco and the farms. Water is wealth in California where you can grow three crops a year. As long as water costs less than the real resource cost, farmers will plant and grow as much as their water allocation as the state continues down the path of ruin. Annual water allocations cannot be banked, use it or loose it. Over 75% of all water use in California is for agriculture and the demand will always be just a little more than the last wet year when times were so good. The agriculture incentive scheme has become extremely perverse.