Tiny Barnhart, TX Runs Dry - Drought Plus Demand On Aquifers For Drilling = Pumps Sucking Air

[hatrack]

Barnhart, a small community in West Texas, has run out of water.

John Nanny, an Irion County commissioner and an official with Barnhart’s water supply corporation, said on Thursday that the situation was serious. When reached by telephone, he was working on pumping operations and hoped to have a backup well in service Friday morning. A load of bottled water was on its way to the community center, he said.

The town has one main well that serves 112 customers, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. But the well stopped pumping quickly enough Tuesday evening, and while there is still some water in it, Nanny said, "We don’t want to get down to the mud."

Nanny said he had checked for a leak but had not found one. The Barnhart area has been hard-hit by drought, he said, just as surging oil and gas drilling activities have increased local water demands. Barnhart was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal owing to the increase in oil boom-related railroad traffic through the town. (Incidentally, Barnhart's backup water well was drilled by the railroad in the early 1900s, Nanny said.)

EDIT

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/06/06/west-texas-oilfield-town-runs-out-water/

[niyad]

1. is this one of the areas where t. boone pickens bought up all the water rights?

[pscot]

4. No

The area Pickens infests is well north. Ilirion county must be at the shallow, tail end of the Ogalla.

[hatrack]

5. Couple of counties south and east of Midland, but tiny . . . maybe 2,000 residents in all

nt

[Eleanors38]

2. No surprise at all. And if have a dumpy trailer on your deer lease

you can sell it for your asking price and have it removed in the same day (housing for oil workers). Water? They use that stuff anymore?

[enough]

3. The shape of things to come. (nt)

[Champion Jack]

6. And they tell us that this is prosperity