Groundwater running out?
Nov 30, 2009 10:00 AM, By Elton Robinson, Farm Press Editorial Staff
It’s one of agriculture’s biggest ironies that water can be in such dire supply under the ground while inundating the countryside at the surface.
DAVE FREIWALD with the U.S. Geological Survey shows visitors well monitoring equipment which allows for real-time Web access of groundwater levels.
But in eastern Arkansas, this inequity can work to agriculture’s benefit with the right combination of conservation projects, says conservation officials.
Many of these projects were on display during a Water Resources Conservation Tour through Arkansas in late September. The tour was organized by the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts to show local, state and federally elected officials, landowners and conservation partners best management practices and projects currently being implemented to address critical groundwater depletion and water quality concerns in the region.
Conservation officials have declared 11 counties in Arkansas as critical groundwater decline areas and 21 more counties are under evaluation. The critical areas include portions of White and Pulaski counties, most of Lonoke County and all of Prairie, Jefferson, Arkansas, Ouachita, Calhoun, Bradley, Union and Columbia counties.
“Depending on the county, we’re withdrawing somewhere between 20 percent and 70 percent more water than the (Memphis Alluvial) aquifer will sustain,” said Andrew Wargo, AACD president and farm manager for Baxter Land Co. in southeast Arkansas. “In other words, we’re overdrafting the account in all the counties in eastern Arkansas.”
In addition, expected increases in world population will increase demand for agricultural water. Needs of municipalities, fish and wildlife and navigation also have to be considered in conservation plans.
A major problem, according to Wargo, is that groundwater protection and conservation “are no longer under the realm of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. “And at the last minute, there was no stimulus money approved for the Grand Prairie project.”
Wargo says the state “has to very aggressively implement savings techniques. We have to develop as rapidly as possible, varieties of various crops that demand less water, and we’ve got to aggressively develop more widespread use of tailwater recovery and diversions of surfacewater.”
Wargo believes that the implementation of the projects can preserve groundwater in Arkansas, “but I would hope that we can accomplish this before we have depleted the aquifer to the point that it cannot recover.”
Wargo says Arkansas farmers “are doing a better job of monitoring their runoff, and more farmers are taking advantage of the various conservation programs available through the government to implement tailwater recovery and other practices. There is a tax credit program which allows farmers to construct shallow water impoundments which can reduce your dependence on sub-surface water.”
