Salafe Drinking Water: The Texas Panhandgle

A potential solution for farmers would be to switch to a subsurface drip irrigation system that could permanently cut farmers' water use by 25 to 50 percent. This would alleviate some of the need for conservation and free up more state water reserves for urban use during time of regional drought (U.S. Water News Online).

With 1,400 miles of water and 9 states using it- water is running out fast. Farmers that use the water are saying that they have more legal rights to use the water since they are growing food to give to everyone. Although, cities are needing water to keep their people alive as well.

Each year, at least 7.8 trillion gallons of water are drawn up from the Ogalla Aquifer to irrigate the crops planted on the High Plains. These cros are the main food sourrce for our entire country. Tragically, irrigation is depleting the aquifer faster than it can replenish itself, and that is the problem. In fact, only the tiniest fraction of the water is ever replaced in the Ogallala Aquifer. If the water were ever fully depleted, the aquifer would need 6,000 years to refill naturally (Zwingle 83). The only way the Ogalla can be replenished is by water seeping down through the layers of soil until it reaches the aquifer. This water comes from the small amount of precipitation in the region, as well as from streams, reservoirs, canals, and irrigation (McGuire and Sharpe).

Envision yourself, about to complete a straightforward, everyday thing such as washing the dishes, suddenly to your surprise there is no water coming out of the faucet. Well for the civilians of East Porterville this is their reality. California has always had very lenient and ineffective groundwater regulations. Today, this has become a major issue, especially with California's severe drought. The regulation of the aquifer is a necessity because cleanliness is a basic human right and by not regulating the groundwater and leaving civilians with no working water, that right is taken away. The right to bathe, wash your hands, and have a working toilet is simply no more. Furthermore there are scientific statements, proving that excessively pumping groundwater will lower the water levels, which will likely lead to the land level sinking as well.

As Texas continues to increase in urbanization, the amount of water needed for municipal and industrial uses will increase significantly. More than half the water in Texas comes from underground. Aquifers in some areas of the state are being consumed faster than they can be filled again. Having a sustainable and efficient groundwater management policy is important to ensure that the future water demands will be satisfied.

In the United States, the available water resources is also under assault. Half of water collected and stored by existing infrastructure is usually used in the production of electricity. This forces the population to use and divide what little there is left. This has always been a “good enough” approach until now, when water prices and population is on the rise.(3) There are already calls for charging water resources in order to increase efficiency of use.(3) Water protection is already being carried out and has been for years, but there is still water pollution occurring within the United States. After the Civil war, America strived to provide its population with clean water

Now, what is an aquifer and what is it used for? Aquifers are an aquifer is a body of saturated rock through which water can easily move (isu.edu). In order for a well to be productive, it must be drilled into an aquifer (isu.edu). Rocks such as granite and schist are generally poor aquifers because they have a very low porosity (isu.edu). However, if these rocks are highly fractured, they make good aquifers (isu.edu). A well is a hole drilled into the ground to penetrate an aquifer (isu.edu). One aquifer, called the Ogallala aquifer, produces one-fifth of the nations freshwater to crops in the mid-west (washingtonpost.com). But there is a problem, it is starting to dry up (washingtonpost.com). As a result, the aquifer is slowly getting depleted, with the water table dropping by as much as two feet per year in some counties (washingtonpost.com). And once they drain, it could take hundreds or thousands of years for those ancient aquifers, which were first formed millions of years ago, to fully recharge with rainfall (washingtonpost.com). Researchers found that 30 percent of the Kansas portion of the Ogallala Aquifer has already been pumped out, and another 39 percent will get used up in the next half-century at existing rates (washingtonpost.com). Kansas, clearly, is on the fast track to depletion (washingtonpost.com). As a result, agricultural production is likely to

Imagine having to go outside every time one needs to use the restroom. There has been a drought going on in California for the past four years. There is a feud for water between farmers, citizens, and the drillers who get drain the water. The drought is a damaging issue that is affecting the lives of many. Therefore, California’s government should pass laws to manage how aquifers are to be properly used.

The negative of the “supply-side” management strategy is: the contamination due to fracking for creating wells and bottling to store water, and deadly levels of arsenic in ARS wells. On other side, the positive of the “supply-side” management strategy is that Its projected that with the use of a 15 gallon reservoirs and a 66 gallon water treatment plants can be cut down 1/3 of groundwater usage. We must use desalination plants, wells, bottling, and reservoirs to counteract the rainwater cannot naturally replenish the aquifers because of the human developments covering the ground.

California needs to have a law to limit and supervise the water being taken out of the aquifer because the aquifer is running out and it is affecting California. For Example we have been pumping water from the aquifer that is 20,000 years old. People in California rely on the water because it is our main freshwater source especially when we are in a drought. The drought has been so bad that the ground in San Joaquin Valley has dropped 10-20 times faster since the last drought a decade ago. Since California was not measuring how much water was being pumped or that is left and since the aquifer is a main freshwater source for California how will we know when to stop using the water, or when the aquifer will run out, scientist’s have guessed that we have 65% of water remaining

Arizona’s extended drought is forcing water companies to take water from non-replenishable aquifers which take centuries to refill. Central Arizona needs to take drastic measures to reduce the amount of water consumed to ensure less water is drained from aquifers. A crucial measure which needs to be implemented is water conservation; some of these necessary water conservation methods include metering and increasing the water efficiency in agriculture.

If California regulates aquifer, farmers are going to be looking at buying less pickups, employing less people, and buying less tractors (Source 1). “We are tied to the groundwater 100 percent," a farmer said, "so ultimately it will have an effect on consumer prices. There's just no getting around that" (Source 1). “The crippling drought is expected to cost the state $2.2 billion in 2014 and put more than 17,000 farm workers out of a job, according to a July study partly funded by the state’s department of food and agriculture” (Source 2). If aquifer is regulated, the economy is going to crash, prices of food will go up, if prices of food go up, prices of everything will go up, farmers will go out of business, people who work for farmers will lose their jobs, people who sell farmers equipment won’t sell enough hardware and make less money, and the government will lose billions of dollars. Also, ⅓ of the world is fed by farmers in California and if aquifer is regulated, ⅓ of the world will not have enough food and there might be a possibility of hunger. Californians aren’t realizing this. "City folks just don't understand that they're biting the hand that feeds them” (Source 1). We need groundwater for the sake of our

One of the biggest consumers of groundwater in our state are farmers. During a drought the farmers have to use wells to water their crops. The water from these wells use garoundwater from Aquifers. Water in Aquifers provide 60% of California's groundwater in drought years. Because California has been in a drought for the last 5 years, farmers have used and over used groundwater from wells. Over-pumping can compress soil and rocks making them compact

As the worlds population grows, it is forced by circumstances that it has created to face the limitations of the worlds resources. Most people in the US have always been fortunate enough to have enough of whatever they wanted. When something they like breaks or wears out, they throw it away or buy a new one, and they often don’t even make an attempt to repair an item. They neglect basic maintenance until they damage their belongings beyond repair, and expect that they’ll always have enough. But some things are beyond their control, beyond there power or financial ability to replace or repair. The world’s drinking water supply is one of these without concern, without attention, without preventative maintenance and reclamation and

In today’s society, the idea of a limited resource is not a foreign concept. Most people understand that eventually humans will use up many of these resources, such as fossil fuels, and they will cease to exist. However, very rarely does a conversation about limited resources get started over the water. While water itself is not a limited resource, clean drinkable water is becoming scarcer as people continue to use excess water. The documentary “Last Call at the Oasis” highlights how precious water is to survival and just how much miss use of water occurs in the United States alone. Even though the United States has gone down the wrong path with its water consumption methods, it may not be too late to recover. With the proper systems and education in place, the chances of delaying a water crisis increase exponentially.