why is California always in a drought crisis, but landlocked states in the Midwest are not?
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The Midwest is headed for a major widespread water crisis.
If you dig down into the earth, there are layers. Some are sandy or rocky, and some layers are clay.
As rain and snow-melt percolate down through the soil, they eventually hit a clay layer, and then the water spreads out flat. It’s called the “water table”.
This is why the pioneers could dig down to make a well. Hopefully it is close to the surface, and it helps if you are near a river.
The snow melting in Canada every summer flows down into rivers and lakes, and some of it refreshes a natural water aquifer called the Oglalla.
Pre-WWII, most midwestern farmers didn’t have electricity, so they could not install a water pump to pull up water from the aquifers below for irrigation.
Water pump irrigation transformed Midwestern farming, who no longer needed to depend on sporadic rains.
After a couple decades, farmers were pulling out more water than nature was putting back. However, the Oglalla was considered so large that we would easily find a solution “later”.
Now that the Oglalla is critically low, farmers are worried about future water restrictions from the federal government. So…they are trying to establish a “baseline” of water consumption by having a high volume used every year.
That way, if their water gets cut back 10%, they will still have a significant volume available.
They are hurting the system in order to benefit themselves.
To cross from Mexico to the US in certain places, people used to have to swim across the Rio Grande (*large river). Due to heavy farm irrigation, you can now walk across near the south end in the dry season.
The news doesn’t seem to care about it.
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