A Short Look at the Guarani Aquifer

In our part of the world the Ogallala Aquifer is really important, and has been written about extensively.  It is often touted (sometimes accurately and sometimes not) as the largest, the most heavily developed and/or the most stressed aquifer - in the northern hemisphere, the US and/or the world.

However, when it comes to size and volume of water, it's the Guarani Aquifer that clearly sets the bar.  This expansive aquifer is said to cover 1.2 million square kilometers, but quite a bit of its extent has yet to be verified - it might be even bigger.  It underlies parts of Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina in South America, with Brazil having the lion's share (61.6%) of it.  Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay have 21%, 8% and 3.3% respectively.  According to one published synopsis (Cassuto and Sampaio) at the rate current usage the aquifer will last for another 2,000 years.  Wikipedia is a bit more generous, claiming that at the worlds current population (6.9 billion) the Guarani could supply the worlds drinking water needs for 1,600 years. 


Well, what to do with the Guarani?  Not long ago the 4 countries claimed sovereign ownership of the aquifer and have been working together to develop a transboundary agreement.  The process is called GAS, for Guarani Aquifer System.  While all four countries have signed the GAS agreement, not all of the Countries have ratified it yet.  And not everyone is satisfied with the agreement, which according to some, is more fluff than substance and as such, will be an ineffective development and management directive.  I say not to worry, for if they screw this up, we've developed the LEMA process they can use to correct things later.  Anyway, now you know a bit about the Guarani Aquifer.  

Kansas GMD Water Level Changes, 1997 - 2013

More numbers.  Following are the water level changes in all 5 GMDs between the years 1997 and 2013.  These changes are based on approximately 1200 monitoring wells measured in January of each year in all five of the Kansas GMDs.  The first row would be the water level change between the January 1996 and the January 1997 measurements. Our (GMD 4) numbers are highlighted.

The central Kansas GMDs  (GMD 2 and GMD 5) are supposed to be managed for long term safe yield, so the totals and the average values posted along the bottom are not as comparable to the remaining three western GMDs as most would expect.

The contrast among the western Kansas GMDs is interesting.  GMD 1 is the smallest and oldest and is by far the most advanced along its decline and saturated thickness trends.  Much of this area is projected to have the least remaining aquifer lifetime.  GMD 3, on the other hand, is the largest district, has the most saturated thickness, the most wells, the most irrigated area, the highest water use, and consequently the largest declines.  GMD 4 is smack dab in the middle of these two extremes.

All this to confirm that the GMD 4 annual average decline rate is the .6 feet per year we've been reporting for a number of years now.  Anyway, just thought I should try to keep the data freaks engaged from time to time.  And I am very sorry about the wavy columns - I've not figured out yet how to set tabs in Blogger!

Year     GMD1   GMD2  GMD3  GMD4  GMD5    5 GMDs

96-97          0.90        -0.15         -0.43         -0.14         0.90           0.22

97-98          0.53         1.56           0.04         -0.33         0.91           0.54

98-99         -0.57         0.52         -1.29          -0.26         0.04          -0.31

99-00         -0.38         0.20         -0.89          0.00         -0.15          -0.24  

00-01         -0.44        -0.98         -2.20         -1.16        -0.44          -1.04

01-02         -0.74        -0.97         -1.75         -0.40        -0.70          -0.91  

02-03         -1.37        -0.93         -3.35         -1.51        -1.48          -1.73  

03-04         -0.89        -0.25         -1.81         -1.14        -0.97          -1.01

04-05          0.24         1.09         -0.42         -0.60          0.10           0.08  

05-06         -0.29         0.00         -1.11         -0.57         -0.11          -0.42              

06-07         -0.73        -2.48         -2.45         -0.29        -1.39          -1.47

07-08         -1.15         2.12         -1.99         -0.89          3.34           0.29  

08-09         -0.29         1.63         -3.03         -0.42          0.58          -0.31

09-10         -0.43        -0.26         -1.39          0.10          0.63          -0.27

10-11         -0.72        -0.70         -3.05         -0.50         -0.44          -1.08

11-12         -1.49        -3.06         -4.26         -0.59         -2.95          -2.47

12-13         -1.54        -1.63         -3.56         -1.39        -1.83          -1.99

Totals        -9.36        -4.29         -32.94      -10.09       -3.96         -12.13

GMD A/A   -0.55        -0.25         -1.94         -0.59        -0.23       

Another Abandoned Well Tale

It was late October last year and CJ was out alone very early Saturday morning (1:30 A.M.) rabbit hunting of all things, near Merritt Island, Florida.  His next step would be onto an old piece of plywood that was covering an abandoned well that he never knew was there.  The fall wasn't too far, but the 12 feet of cold dirty water in the bottom sure made things difficult for him - being fully dressed and all.

He started screaming for help but at that time of night, it turned out to be pretty hopeless. He worked at keeping his head above water by using several methods - each as equally exhausting as the one before it - and was beginning to think the end was near after getting no help.  He took up screaming once more when daylight arrived.

His luck would change, however, when by 10:00 A.M. a man walking his dog heard the distress calls and called 911.  By 10:30 A.M. - after nine hours of cold, clinging and clutching - the firefighters arrived with a ladder to help him out.  Just another reminder that abandoned wells pose threats to our groundwater resources and ourselves at some point in their existence.  Don't let it happen any more.  Know of an abandoned well?  Contact someone to take care of it permanently.  The landowner or a local official (City, Township or County) would be good first calls.  Environmental agencies or even law enforcement might also be options.  No question about it, CJ was a very lucky man that night even though he bagged not a single rabbit.

Finally, if you're interested in these tales of abandoned wells, click on the "wells and accidents" link at the bottom of this article or on the Blogs Label List just to the right of the visitors Cluster Map.  There you'll find all the wells and accidents posts I've done to date - all in one place.  The Blog Label List is alphabetical, so keep scrolling down to very near the bottom to find the "wells and accidents" link.  Enjoy.
 

LEMAs Getting Attention in Kansas and Elsewhere

During the recent April and May board meetings here in GMD 4 the issue of how to continue addressing the district’s enhanced management protocol was discussed.  Recall that the first foray into sub basin enhanced management started looking at six high priority areas (HPAs), with HPA SD-6 eventually becoming the state's first Local Enhanced Management Area (LEMA).  The discussions were about what to do with the remaining five HPAs now that the first one (SD-6) has been completed.  

Long story short, the board is starting to generate the local interest in another HPA, but will hit it hard most likely this Fall - after farming season is completed.  Whether or not we undertake our second LEMA depends on the public response in the selected HPA.

In other LEMA efforts, the Western Kansas GMD 1 (Scott City) has also begun public discussions on the possibility of a LEMA in their GMD.  Thus far they have conducted five public meetings (1 per county) and are working through their second set.  They are considering the option of 1, district-wide LEMA (with and without regional variations), and are also discussing a formal voting procedure in the process.

The Southwest Kansas GMD 3 (Garden City) has also begun some preliminary public discussions on the potential use of LEMAs in their district, conducting several County meetings earlier this year.  At this time they are conducting several sub-group meetings within interested Counties who want to continue the dialog and are in the process of scheduling the remaining County meetings. 

By design, LEMAs were legislated initially only for the GMD areas because there was already a governance and funding mechanism in place, and a local groundwater management plan to build off of.  The state quickly recognized the potential of LEMAs (as did several non-GMD area leaders with water issues) and a bill was introduced in the 2013 session that would authorize "Agreed Local Management Areas" (ALMAs) - essentially identical to LEMAs, but putting the County Commissioners in the role of the GMDs in non-GMD areas.  This bill  did not get out of committee but will likely be discussed further. 

I expected a certain level of interest in Kansas, but I did not expect the coverage our Kansas LEMA has been getting elsewhere.  First it popped up on Twitter with a handful of water folks re-tweeting the SD-6 efforts.  Then the Circle of Blue (Pacific Institute) did a story on the effort that made some blogs and twitter again.  And finally, just two days ago I got a call from a Wisconsin irrigator who was interested in forming a local GMD in that state.  Who knows, maybe LEMAs are destined for broader areas than local enhanced management ones.

The Federal Government and Water, Again...

The theme of State's Rights regarding water resources and the appropriate federal role has been ongoing for a very long time, and about every 20 years or so the issue is raised again - usually by the states, and usually accusing the federal government of either overstepping it's water authority or trying outright to grab the states' waters.

It's happening again it seems.  On April 25 the Water and Power Subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing focused on opposing continual federal usurpation of local water rights.  Several activities were fleshed out during these hearings.  One was a claim by a Wyoming Conservation District chairman that the National Blueways System program run by the Interior Department summarily designated the Yellowstone River basin in Montana and Wyoming as a Blueway without any of the increased coordination elements the program was purporting to provide - increased coordination and consultation with affected landowners or public hearings.  While the Blueways program says it is simply to promote local conservation efforts and does not add any new regulations or protection statuses to designated rivers, the locals are a bit more direct in their assertion that it could result in the requirement for increased coordination - thus an increased federal presence and influence - since the feds are part of the coordination team.
 
Another example covered in the hearings involved a recent US Forest Service directive that forbids ski areas from selling their water rights except to the next owner of the ski area.  The Colorado Legislators passed a resolution condemning the Forest Service for that policy, and when they introduced a more substantive bill that would have prohibited the federal government from demanding water rights in return for issuing land-use permits, the locals tell that an influential Forest Service Undersecretary made personal calls to Colorado legislators to get the bill set aside.  They too, said the federal government was overstepping its authority in regard to water rights.

I'd be remiss if here I didn't add my pet peeve to the list - involving the activities of the federal Water Information Coordination Program (WICP) and its daughter subcommittee the federal Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI).   Some think a few of these efforts may be another federal foray into state's water right issues, albeit one that is so long, large, broad and hard to follow that it has operated below everyone's radar.  I won't recite everything here, but I've blogged about it before.  Search my blog for "ACWI" if you're interested.

When the mission statement of a workgroup within this complex federally-led entity is:  "Serve as a forum to share information and perspectives that will promote better decision making in the U.S. regarding the sustainability of our nation's water resources.", doesn't it say that "sustainability" is the policy of that federal effort?  When did sustainability of water resources become the national policy of the U.S.?
   
And when a federal agency bulletin says: "The new role of science will be to support environmental decision making to achieve some new level of sustainable use that will provide an assured supply of good-quality water for humans and for stream and riparian ecosystems.", doesn't it read that "sustainability" is the agency policy?

I'm not arguing that sustainability isn't a good and noble goal or policy.  I'm arguing that WICP and ACWI should not be the entity to decide what the federal policy is to be while subcommittees of this group are deciding what data is to be used and where they will get the data.  The data should drive the policy, not the other way around.

What ramifications are there in every venue of water IF the federal government gets to choose the national water policy, and, it is in fact sustainability? Anyway, this entire arrangement should be looked into IMHO.

However, whether I'm right or wrong, you can bet the tussle for control of water between the federal government and the individual states will continue long into the future.  My guess is it'll get more subtle rather than more aggressive.  Anyway, maybe we all should tune into this issue just a bit more.

Handel's Water Music

Handel & King George on the Thames, by Hamman

I was listening to the radio the other day when the segment airing started talking about "water music".  Turns out it was featuring composer George Frideric Handel.  From the NPR segment notes:
   
"In 1717, with England's King George suffering somewhat in the polls, his political advisors suggested that he do something big to get the people behind him. So they came up with the idea of a summer boating party on the Thames.

As the king's court composer, [Handel] was commissioned to write music for this spectacle. The king and his favorites listened from the royal barge as an ensemble of 50 musicians played from another, while boats "beyond counting" crowded alongside.

Though the original scores have been lost, it's clear from the instrumentation and keys that Handel composed the Water Music in three suites: a large one in F with 10 movements, featuring two horns; one in D with five movements (among them the celebrated "Alla Hornpipe"); and one in G with seven movements. While the suites in F and D are clearly open-air music, meant to be played on the barge, the G major grouping was intended perhaps to accompany the king's meal down the river at Chelsea."

The three suites are:

Suite in F major

1. Overture (Largo – Allegro)
2. Adagio e staccato
3. Allegro – Andante – Allegro da capo
4. Minuet
5. Air
6. Minuet
7. Bourrée
8. Hornpipe
9. Allegro (no actual tempo marking)
10. Allegro (variant)
11. Alla Hornpipe (variant)

Suite in D major

1. Overture (Allegro)
2. Alla Hornpipe
3. Minuet
4. Lentement
5. Bourrée

Suite in G major

1. Allegro
2. Rigaudon
3. Allegro
4. Minuet
5. Allegro

Somehow I feel if Handel's "Water Music" were about groundwater, it'd be a heavier type of music - perhaps needing Wagner's genius. Of course, had Wagner handled it, it would have taken another 150 years or so to get done.  Come to think of it, that'd just be par for the course, considering the source!

Rain, Irrigation and Declines in GMD 4

One would hope that irrigation, precipitation and groundwater level changes are all relational - the more it rains, the less we irrigate and the slower the water level decline goes.  The following are data for the 10 Counties in NW Kansas for the years 2000 through 2012.  

Col 1 = Year; Col 2 = Annual average precip (10 stations); Col 3 = Reported water use (GMD 4 total, all uses except domestic); Col 4 = Acres reported irrigated; Col 5 = Inches of water reported applied per reported acre irrigated; and Col 6 = January 1 (following year) water level change.  Unfortunately, 2012 data for water use and acres irrigated are not yet available.

The water level change data come from 275 observation wells across the entire GMD area that are measured each January. 

Year  Precip     Wtr Use      Ac Irr      In/Ac      WL Chg 2000   16.72      497,737      386,055        1.29      -1.16 2001   19.79      424,223      380,152        1.12      -0.41 2002   11.30      527,661      386,350        1.37      -1.51 2003   14.06      484,311      386,979        1.25      -1.14 2004   20.13      479,461      385,161        1.24      -0.6 2005   21.15      397,666      381,202        1.04      -0.57 2006   19.37      435,017      379,479        1.15      -0.29 2007   17.07      417,848      377,010        1.11      -0.89 2008   21.65      406,801      377,691        1.08      -0.42 2009   25.59      301,350      376,254        0.80        0.1 2010   17.45      368,030      376,969        0.98      -0.5 2011   22.48      435,900      380,667        1.15      -0.59 2012   11.76      -1.39
I see a pretty strong correlation (inverse) between rainfall and annual declines - Col 2 and Col 6.  When the rainfall increases, the water level decline rate decreases.  Just eyeballing the numbers, it appears to me that with average annual rainfall (18.35 inches) we'd expect about a .6 foot decline.  With 23-24 inches of rainfall, a .25 foot decline, and with 12-15 inches somewhere around a 1.5 foot decline. I see a little less correlation between the reported water use and the water level change, but there is still some relationship.  It is quite true in the extremes, anyway - the wettest year (2009) saw the least water used and the smallest water level change while the driest year (2002) saw the greatest water use and the largest water level change. Most can probably see the inherent sense of all this, but may wonder why there is not a perfect relationship between rainfall, pumpage and declines.  Well there are a number of reasons why we'll never see such an absolute relationship:
1)  The rainfall data provided is annual precipitation.  Six months out of the year the rainfall is far less relevant to crops and irrigation.  There is probably a more relevant relationship between in-season rainfall and what we're trying to show, but this is hard to flesh out when our region gets just 60-65% of its total rainfall in season. 2)  The rainfall data is highly variable - meaning that while the entire NW Kansas average may have been 20 inches, we easily could have had irrigation areas that only got 14 while other areas got 23.    3)  The quality of rainfall is never known in the data.  You might get 20 inches of annual rain, but if it came in 5 hard rains of 4 inches each over a three hour period, most of it ran off and did not contribute to soil moisture conditions that would allow for reduced irrigation. 4)  Any water level change is a function of natural recharge and pumping withdrawals. While more rain generally means increased recharge (and reduced pumpage) it is not an exact relationship (see reason 3) above). 5)  Cropping is in constant flux and different crops affect withdrawals differently - both the timing and quantity. 6)  A late freeze in the Spring, hail, excessive insect or weed pressures all affect an irrigated crop and the amount of water applied.  It may rain 15 inches, but if a late Spring freeze takes out your corn crop, irrigation is greatly reduced that year. Anyway, I think you get the picture.  But I have to say, all-in-all, there is a pretty good relationship in GMD 4 between rainfall, irrigation use and groundwater declines.  Now, if it'd only rain - at the right time, in the right amount and with the perfect intensity...