Groundwater decline in Nebraska in 2013 'unprecedented'
Source: Omaha World Herald
By Joe Duggan
LINCOLN — Groundwater in Nebraska dropped by “unprecedented” levels last year as farmers stepped up irrigation in response to record drought and heat in 2012.
Underground water tables declined in 90 of the state's 93 counties between spring 2012 and spring 2013, said Aaron Young, groundwater resources coordinator for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Aquifers dropped 2.5 feet on average.
“An average one-year decline of this magnitude has never been recorded before in the state,” Young said Wednesday, referring to groundwater monitoring that has been done since 1930.
Dean Edson, director of the Nebraska Association of Resources Districts, cautioned that one year of data does not signal a water crisis.
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://www.omaha.com/article/20140206/NEWS/140209124/1016#groundwater-decline-in-nebraska-in-2013-unprecedented
http://www.hpwd.com/aquifers/ogallala-aquifer
Ogallala Aquifer
The Ogallala aquifer (pronounced OH-GA-LA-LA) is one of the largest aquifer systems in the world. It stretches across all or portions of eight states generally from north to south to include South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas and underlies about 174,000 square miles. N.H. Darton is credited with describing and naming the formation in 1899 after the town of Ogallala, Nebraska.
The Ogallala aquifer lies relatively near the land surface in most of the above-described area with a maximum thickness of about 1,000 feet with a few hundred feet more the norm. Even in those areas of only a few feet of thickness, the aquifer can almost always be counted on to yield water to a well drilled into it. Some wells yield only a few gallons of water per minute, while others yield 1,000 gallons of water per minute or more. The Ogallala aquifer not only includes the portion of the Ogallala that is saturated with water, but may also include saturated portions of the overlying and underlying formations that are hydraulically connected to the Ogallala.
Water in the Ogallala Aquifer on the Southern High Plains flows from northwest to southeast at about 150 feet per year under natural conditions. This rate of movement can be altered by discharge from the aquifer by pumping wells.
Deposition of the Ogallala Formation began 10 to 12 million years ago during late Tertiary (Miocene/Pliocene) geologic time. Sand, gravel, silt, and clay eroded from upland areas to the west and north were deposited over the erosional land surface of the present-day High Plains by primarily eastward flowing streams. The surface on which the sediments were deposited would have been much like the present area located east of the High Plains escarpment characterized by low hills, relatively shallow valleys, and meandering streams.
FULL info at link.
= new reply since forum marked as read
How can people deny that fracking is causing earthquakes and finding it's way into the groundwater? And I wonder if this fracturing might make the aquifers flood underground caverns and displacing all the air.
As convenient as this is for 'easy' natural gas/oil- in the long run- it's gonna be a real killer of many things. One of them, us.
Off topic question: I might want to add a newsworthy thread but don't want to (or cannot) use "Latest Breaking News". How do you place an article in "Trending Now" or "Greatest Threads" or "The Left Column"? What tabs need pushed, etc. Thanks in advance! 
When the water is gone? Expect food shortages, rationing, riots and famine. Which will affect red and blue states alike, I'm sure.
I do not have the exact figure, but it is way too high. Meanwhile, we keep paving over, fracking, strip mining, and contaminating perfectly good farmland in the eastern US. The eastern US is blessed with plentiful rainfall, but we continue to subsidize and farm marginal lands that require irrigation. Irrigation increases salt levels in the soils and can only be done for a few decades until the soil is poisoned by chemicals and nothing will grow, even the native species.
We are in a lot bigger trouble than people realize. 
People just call me an alarmist or a crazy tree hugger.
.... it's gotta melt & run off or soak in somewhere. I remember when I was little, when NE Wisconsin got unholy shitloads of snow, they'd front end load piles into dump trucks and dump it in the nearest river.
