The Agalala seemed bottomless. Alvin kept farming his 320 acres of dryland wheat. His yields were the same as they’d always been, 20 to 30 bushels an acre, depending on the rain. His income was modest. His costs were almost nothing. He had no irrigation payments, no equipment loans, no operating debt. He drove the same farm, all H he’d driven since 1951. He saved money every year. His neighbors felt sorry for him. Poor old Alvin, they said, sitting on 320 acres of gold and too stubborn to mine it.
1979 through 1982, the first cracks. Two things happened that nobody expected, or rather nobody wanted to expect. First, the farm crisis hit. Vulkar raised interest rates. Corn prices dropped. The farmers who’d borrowed 35,000 for center pivots and a h 100,000 for new tractors suddenly owed money they couldn’t pay. The boom turned to bust. Three farms in Sheridan County went to foreclosure in 1982, but the irrigated farmers survived the price crash barely because they still had water. Their yields were still high even if prices were low.
The irrigation kept them alive. They told themselves the crisis was temporary. It was the second thing that wasn’t temporary. In 1980, the Kansas Geological Survey published a report on the Ogalala aquifer in western Kansas. The numbers were bad. Since the irrigation boom began in the early 70s, the water table in Sheridan County had dropped an average of 3 ft per year. In some areas near the heaviest pumping, it had dropped 5 ft per year. 3 feet per year.
In a county where the saturated thickness averaged 150 ft, that meant the aquifer had lost roughly 30 feet in 10 years, 20% of its water gone. And the recharge rate still half an inch per year, just like Alvin Ducker had asked about at that community center meeting in 1972. A few farmers noticed, most didn’t. The water was still coming, the pumps were still running, the pivots were still turning. Alvin noticed. He drove to the county extension office, picked up a copy of the geological survey report, and read it at his kitchen table.
Then he drove to the co-op, the place where everyone gathered, the place where opinions were shared and reputations were made. And he left the report on the counter. Nobody read it. 1983 through 1985. The acceleration. The aquifer kept dropping 3 ft a year. Some wells that had been drilled to 120 ft were starting to suck sand. The pumps had to work harder. Diesel costs went up. The water came slower. In the summer of 84, the first center pivot in Sheridan County ran dry.
