Christopher Flavelle went to Montana and Kansas to report this story. Data analysis and graphics by Mira Rojanasakul. Nov. 24, 2023 | The New York Times Part of a series on the causes and consequences of disappearing water.
From a small brick building in Garden City, Kan., 13 men manage the use of groundwater across five million acres in the southwest corner of the state, some of the most productive farmland in America for corn, wheat and sorghum.
They serve on the board of Groundwater Management District 3, which since 1996 has overseen the pumping of 16.2 trillion gallons of groundwater — enough to fill Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir, twice over.
The board is elected, but not by everyone: The only people eligible to vote are large landowners, a group of less than 12,000 people in an area of roughly 130,000. And in some years, fewer than 100 people actually vote. Others — cashiers at Walmart, teachers at the community college, workers at the local St. Catherine Hospital — have no say in the management of the aquifer on which they, too, rely.
The aquifer is running out of water, fast. But the board hasn’t slowed down the pumping.
In a country where the value of land often depends on access to water, powerful interests in agriculture, heavy industry and real estate draw vast amounts of water out of the ground. For generations, that water has been treated as an unlimited resource in much of the United States, freely available to anyone who owns a piece of land and can drill a well. Entire local economies have been built around the assumption that the water will never run out.
Now it is starting to run out, not only in Kansas but across much of the country. From Maryland to Hawaii groundwater levels are falling, often the result of overpumping and underregulation, made worse by climate change. As the planet warms, demand for water is increasing. At the same time, increased evaporation, as well as decreased precipitation in some places, means that less water is refilling the aquifers, accelerating their decline.
“If we don’t make change, we’re not going to have water,” said Lindsay Vaughn, a state lawmaker in Kansas who has tried to curtail pumping in her state.
But change is being actively resisted by many of the agribusinesses, multinational companies and big landowners who depend on enormous amounts of water. They say that reducing groundwater access strikes at the heart of local and regional economies. It also strikes at their bottom lines.
“You lose land value, you lose tax base, and quite frankly you lose the way of life,” said Joe Newland, president of the Kansas Farm Bureau.
In reporting around the country, The New York Times found that the struggle is intensifying between those who benefit from pumping large amounts of groundwater and those who see it as a looming catastrophe.
WATER AND GOLD IN NEVADA
Adam Sullivan has one of the most powerful jobs in Nevada. His title is state engineer, which means he decides who gets water in a state that gets less rainfall than any other, and where groundwater levels are sinking rapidly.
But Christina Erling has a different kind of power.
Ms. Erling is vice president of North American government affairs for Barrick Gold Corporation, one of the world’s largest gold mining companies. Based in Canada, Barrick and its joint venture, Nevada Gold Mines, accounted for about three-quarters of the gold produced in Nevada last year, including at Goldstrike, the largest gold mine in North America.
Barrick, along with its joint venture, has made $1.7 million in campaign contributions since 1994, according to data from Open Secrets, a nonprofit group that tracks political donations. That makes it one of the state’s largest corporate political donors.
To keep pits and mine shafts dry, and also to process ore, Barrick pulls huge volumes of water out of the ground. The Goldstrike mine alone consumed 3.4 billion gallons of water last year, according to company documents.
In May, with Nevada facing increasingly severe water problems, a state legislative committee was considering a proposal backed by environmentalists and water managers that would have made it harder in some parts of the state to get new permits to pump water.
It would have strengthened Mr. Sullivan’s authority to reject applications that he viewed as unsustainable. (Visit The New York Times for the original article)
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