Ogallala Blue: Water and Life on the High Plains - Hardcover

Ashworth, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393058425 ISBN 13: 9780393058420

Publisher: W. W. Norton, 2006

Synopsis

The story of a crucial, dwindling natural resource: an invisible ocean of fresh water under the Great Plains.

The Ogallala aquifer contains enough water to fill Lake Erie not once but nine times over, and it stretches from Texas to South Dakota, from Colorado almost to Nebraska. Every year, five trillion gallons are pumped out for irrigation, and if the aquifer went dry (or, more accurately, when it goes dry), $20 billion worth of food and fiber would disappear practically overnight.

In this lively, carefully researched narrative, William Ashworth tells the history of the Ogallala, from its formation after the retreat of the glaciers through to its uncertain future. The most dramatic part of that history deals with efforts to exploit the hidden waters, starting with the primitive wells of long-vanished tribes, through the invention of the center-pivot sprinkler, and on to ever more sophisticated extraction technologies. This is an account of people as well as water, with many vignettes of those living in the shadow of the Ogallala's decline and ultimate demise.

About this title

About the Author

William Ashworth, an award-winning author of several books, is a freelance writer living in Ashland, Oregon.

From Publishers Weekly

People of the Great Plains have been drawing on the underground water of the sprawling Ogallala Aquifer for centuries. But it took a failed tinkerer's single inspired invention in 1948—the center-pivot sprinkler system—to precipitate this century's looming crisis over access to potable water, on land stretching from South Dakota to Texas and from Colorado almost to Iowa. The sprinkler (followed by ever more sophisticated water extraction systems) sprayed water across fields of corn and cotton more efficiently, reports Ashworth (The Late, Great Lakes). But this in turn led to an increase in land under cultivation—a situation that, compounded by suburban sprawl in the southwest, means that for the past half-century, water that had collected below the surface over many millennia is now being consumed far more quickly than nature can replenish it. Ashworth recounts some conservation efforts that could achieve a "tenuous balance" between supply and demand, but he doesn't hold out much hope that years of rampant mining of the aquifer's once-vast liquid resources can be reversed. Firsthand vignettes about efforts to introduce dryland farming techniques and reintroduce buffalo herds add some zip to the narrative, but for a doomsday book about a dire situation, the text is often pretty dry. Map. (June)
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About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0393058425
• ISBN 13: 9780393058420
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 330