This time, closed permanently

There’s no reason to think there won’t be a lot more of this.

And it’s been brewing for some time now.

The Kansas judge who delivered the ruling closing two wells, Linda Gilmore, was not making any big reversal of previous action. She had closed the wells operated by the company American Warrior back in 2013, though the closure then was simply temporary.

And that had stemmed from 2005 complaint by the Garetson Brothers, a farming operation whose managers were becoming increasingly concerned about the diminishing levels of the Ogallala Aquifer. The aquifer, which runs from Texas in the south to the Dakotas in the north, has been dropping steadily for decades. In 2007, after they got the state to start seriously investigating the Ogallala’s status, they withdrew the complaint: “Rather than being a positive catalyst for change in the effort to extend the useful life of the aquifer as a whole we have been perceived as selfishly damaging our neighbors for our own gain.”

So they were not especially eager to return to the fray, but they did five years later, when they cited evidence that their water rights, which were relatively senior in the area (their water usage in the area goes back 80 years), were being specifically impacted by other usage.

One news report said, “A fifth-generation farmer, Garetson says that if nothing changes in a few years, his area of western Kansas will run out of irrigation water. He has watched the declines only get worse. State figures that Kansas will use 75 percent of its water in 50 years if nothing is done, is on the low side, he said.”

This suggests that more than community spirit in aquifer protection is about to become engaged: We’re now getting into the first in time, first in right territory – people protecting their own basic water rights.

This could wind up changing the whole character of dealing with declining aquifers. If the dynamic turns into one of people who are acting to protect their own water (and livelihoods) rather than one of scattered activists who speak of waster in technical and theoretical terms … conditions may change.