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Detailed Response
to Pete Letheby’s
Editorial Letheby statements in bold.
The number of gallons in an acre foot is 325,851, not the number
Letheby uses.
Actually, the math is off. Corn requires about 26 inches of water
to produce 200 bushels -- 3,530 gallons to produce one bushel. The
further east one goes, the greater the percentage of that required 26
inches comes from precipitation. Corn requires 26 inches of water per acre. That is 8,472,126 gallons of water per acre. For North Platte, about 6,517,020 of those gallons fall from the sky, though some of them fall at the wrong time. Multiplying 15 inches by the gallons in an acre foot does not equal
the number Letheby says it does. He
is off by a large amount. Now tell me that groundwater-irrigated, subsidized overproduction of corn
on mostly dry land is not the biggest agricultural travesty ever. The use of groundwater to produce corn in
The Ogallala Aquifer is a storage facility that can
be
added to and removed from. It
should be noted that an average of 1.7 million acre feet of precipitation
falls on the county from which WaterClaim is suggesting water be removed. WaterClaim suggests that less than a third of the precipitation
be captured and removed. Add
1.7 million AF and remove 0.5 million AF, and you end up adding to the
aquifer...not draining it. ...so
- in part, at least - those same people can maintain their
counterproductive culture of irrigating $1.90- a-bushel corn. The dictionary defines productive as meaning,
“Yielding
favorable or useful results; constructive.”
Producing corn that is fed to cows, pigs, and chickens to
produce food for humans to eat is not productive?
Producing more than is needed today and storing it for a year
when enough is produced isn’t productive?
Mr. Letheby needs to use a dictionary.
(If you think we need to irrigate dry land to produce more corn for more
ethanol, think again. In a few years, we'll be making ethanol out of
grasses and other materials that require much, much less water and
chemicals than corn.) I
believe the statement here is factually wrong. “In a few years.”
How
many might that be? To my knowledge, there isn’t even a demonstration
project on the concept of using grass for ethanol. If there is, please
share. The landowner who uses water to irrigate a crop has been allowed
to do this by the Legislature and the NRDs (that the Legislature
created). Each voter in the state helped elect the politicians. They
have been making policy for a very long time. In fact, they have been
setting policy since before irrigation came into existence. Would these
policy makers and the people who elected them have any responsibility
for Nebraska
water policy? When we vote, we help create the system that has
encouraged irrigation to happen.
Letheby says that the population of rural
I think this is the only statement in his entire diatribe where we agree. I get the impression, though, that he defines “manage water wisely” to mean "not using it. "
According to the According to many researchers - including John Opie, who has performed
groundwater studies at Kansas
John Opie is currently teaching Environmental Policy Studies at the
New Jersey Institute of Technology.
One of his white papers can be found at
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~jsherow/opie.htm
Perhaps he has another study
somewhere that makes the reference that Letheby claims.
However, the white paper linked here phrases the life expectancy of the
aquifer quite differently and the recharge data for areas far from Even if Letheby quotes Opie accurately, the idea that the aquifer
will only last another 50 years is very wrong.
Some facts that one might find interesting. According to the USGS, there was more water in the Nebraska portion of the Ogallala Aquifer in 2000 than there was in 1918. http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/circ/2003/circ1243/#pdf The areas with an increasing water table have
added more water to the aquifer than the areas with a lowering water table have removed. It is hard to drain the aquifer when it is
actually increasing in volume in so much of the state. While there are a
few areas in Nebraska that are at risk of not being able to operate
large irrigation wells within the next fifty years, most of the state
can irrigate for hundreds of years, if not more, if current trends hold.
What's really sad about this entire scenario is the incredulous lack of
foresight on the part of the Nebraskans who serve us in government. Why
have so few people stepped up and spoken out about this? One reason that not as many people share Letheby’s concerns is
that many of his statements are false and not supported by the facts.
Why do we always allow irrigation interests to rule our NRDs, county
boards and even the Legislature? He asks a rhetorical question that seems to call the voters stupid.
Take, for example, the Water Policy Task Force appointed by former Gov.
Mike Johanns. Of its 49 members, 38 are farm irrigators or have been
politically sympathetic to irrigated agriculture. Only three have
environmental interests; only two represent recreation, with one of them
sensitive to irrigators; and only five represent municipalities, with
two also having ties to irrigation. It
is interesting how each of us views the elephant. Letheby sees a Task Force
dominated by irrigators. I see a Task Force that was hand-chosen by the
DNR and appointed by the Governor. Many of the “irrigation
interests” that were chosen were people who oppose irrigation. Take
Robert Ambrosek, for example. He was appointed by the Governor. He sat
on the Upper Republican NRD board. He is a farmer. He believes Despite that convincing data, Steve Smith of Imperial - founder and
director of WaterClaim, the group of irrigators and business interests
that has floated the idea of the huge interbasin water transfer - claims
that Yes, there is such a climate. The Letheby editorial is one of the
best demonstrations of this climate.
See article, "Criminalization of Irrigation," for a more detailed
study of who opposes the use of water. http://www.waterclaim.org/Articles/Public/criminalization_of_irrigation.htm
According to Colorado State University researcher Melvin Skold,
groundwater-irrigated corn production in the semiarid Great Plains -
generally the area west of the 100th meridian - accounts for less than
13 percent of all the maize grown in the United States. It
would be nice if there were some documentation for this claim.
Googling Melvin Skold does reveal “Agricultural
Systems and Economic Characteristics of the Great Plains,”
by
Melvin Skold located at http://www.nrel.colostate.edu/projects/climate_impacts/skold.htm In
it, Skold describes some of the agricultural statistics for land
west of the 98th meridian, not the 100th meridian. I wonder if Letheby changed the reference on the meridian to be
on the other side of where he lives for a reason.
Skold says that 21% of the nation's corn is produced west of
Central City,
In this region, there is absolutely no reason to consume such large
quantities of our valuable groundwater to grow something we already have
too much of. The nation currently
produces about 10% more corn than it uses.
This corn is stored and can be used if, in the following year,
there is any kind of crop problem. If one were to stop irrigating 21% of the
nation's corn crop, there
would not be enough corn to meet the demand.
This would result in a surge in corn prices that would, in turn, result in
higher food prices and fuel prices.
Letheby also assumes that
"large water quantities" being used is a bad
thing.
"Large" is relative.
Agriculture uses 95 percent of The nice thing about water is that it is possible for both
agriculture and recreation to use it at the same time.
Many of the municipalities would not exist if irrigation did not
happen. The idea that
agriculture should use less water because wildlife and recreation have a
greater interest is forgetting that many municipalities are
dependent on agriculture and many of the recreational opportunities exist because of
the things people do for agriculture's sake.
And about that water transfer? You'll be intrigued to know that most of
the members of WaterClaim, the group proposing the idea, are residents
of Perkins, Chase and True.
The University
of True. And because it is
true, we should find ways to reverse this decline.
Transferring water from areas where it cannot be used to areas
that it can is one way of increasing the aquifer and simultaneously
helping wildlife, recreation and municipalities. |