ABSTRACT
The story of the Ogallala Aquifer uniquely connects the emergence of a major irrigated landscape in the heart of the United States and its catastrophic depletion in recent years. The Ogallala transformed a vast semiarid region into a fertile agricultural Eden and its overuse is threatening to return the region to a bleak past. The Ogallala contained more water than the Mississippi River had carried to the Gulf of Mexico in 200 years. The Ogallala was formed by runoff from the Rocky Mountains that became trapped under the modern Great Plains. Ogallala suggests that as the states in the High Plains realized that decline of the aquifer was real, they attempted to devise ways to limit consumption of water: They have pursued a variety of different paths to conserve the Ogallala while still consuming it because there was a broad realization that there were no substitutes for Ogallala groundwater.
