Nebraska’s Underground Ocean
The fight to conserve one of Nebraska’s greatest assets
Nebraska was part of what used to be known as the Great American Desert — bare plains with few trees and no water on the surface. This changed when a scientist discovered the aquifer and named it after a town near Ogallala, Neb. The saturated sediments are the largest in America covering Nebraska, Wyoming, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Colorado. They have enough water to fill Lake Huron. Of all the states mentioned, Nebraska has the deepest and most expansive parts of the aquifer. This has prompted many farms to spring up in the region and has helped make America the number one exporter of food.
Unfortunately, the Ogallala Aquifer is starting to dry up. About 30 percent of the aquifer has vanished and some experts are saying that around 70 percent of the aquifer will dry up by 2060. In some parts, the aquifer can replenish itself one inch a year, yet one foot is removed from the ground per year. This unsustainable practice can lead to devastating effects such as a decline in farming, sinkholes and water contamination.
Since Nebraska holds the most expansive parts of the aquifer, the state needs to come up with laws to preserve the aquifer. To combat the possibility of “Day Zero,” when the well runs dry, Nebraska has prevented the construction of new wells for farming, no transportation of water over property lines or states without approval and no expanding farmland after obtaining a well. Some states have decided to cut their consumption by 20% but even if the water consumption is achieved it is still unsustainable. These efforts may be in vain if the other states do not see the importance of preserving the water. Some people look at corn as being a culprit. Growing corn in America is not profitable because of the cheap selling point and the high cost. Government subsidies make corn profitable and farmers have been growing large amounts of corn. As of now, corn has some uses such as feeding humans, feeding livestock and making ethanol. To combat the corn problem scientists are trying to make a greater diversity of corn that uses less water and figure out how corn can be profitable without government subsidy. One way of making corn more profitable is by taking corn crude oil and corn kernel fiber and making it into a biodegradable plastic known as Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA).
https://nebraskacorn.gov/cornstalk/sustainability/aquifer-101/
https://nebraskacorn.gov/research/
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1220351110
by Stuart Cuateco