Law Of Capture Biting TX Water Users In The Ass; "The Last 50 Yrs, We Haven't Been Proactive Enough"

[hatrack]

Yeah, no kidding.

EDIT

Another outcome of the right-to-capture philosophy underlies the seemingly tardy conservation efforts of the High Plains Water District, the largest in Texas, encompassing 16 counties. Elsewhere, particularly in Kansas, farmers irrigating where the Ogallala is shallowest are required to meter their wells, observe water-use restrictions, and are fined for not doing so.

Landowners in the HPWD – even today – can choose to suck their portion of the Ogallala dry any time they like. Finally, some 63 years after its birth, the water district does expect to have mandatory restrictions in place by the end of the year. Meanwhile, travelers to this region confront a procession of collapsing communities.

In the ghostly town of Earth, the Dairy Queen is pockmarked as if in a war zone. Tiny Lockney -- population 1,900 and running out of water – recently had to buy 82 acres of nearby Ogallala-fed land for $605,000. In Plainview, the double dose of drought and the diminishing Ogallala caused the closing of the Cargill beef-processing plant, eliminating 2,000 jobs.

“The last 50 years, we haven’t been proactive enough with water conservation,” says Glen Schur, whose farm is within a few miles of the closed Cargill plant in Plainview. Though one part of this Texas story is truly terrifying, Schur represents another way forward, by embracing technological advances and displaying bottom-up leadership.
“The majority of us wish the water district would just set the rules,” he says. “Let’s get them adopted. It’s less than 10 percent of the producers who are opposed.”

EDIT



http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/last-drop-americas-breadbasket-faces-dire-water-crisis-n146836

[DetlefK]

1. They didn't pray hard enough for rain.

The great disconnect of the US never ceases to amaze me.

Look at the big picture:
The US is one of the most influential nations of Earth in terms of culture and technology.
If America's economy coughs, the world-economy gets a cold.
It has the most sophisticated and most powerful military in the world.

Look at the details:
Its roads and bridges are falling apart.
The public education-system is falling apart.
The political landscape is tilted sharply in favor of rich people.
The whole electoral process and regulations are designed to prevent a change to the stagnant Two-Party-System.
Healthcare is entrusted to for-profit-organizations and treated as good, not a right.
Large parts of the population have a pre-enlightenment-era scientific view of the world.
Parts of the population are disputing whether discrimination of women she be undone at all by laws.
Incredibly high death-rates by gun.
Not a week without a headline of a policeman abusing or fatally killing people.
Devotion to nation and history with a fervor equal to religious fanaticism and at the same time a profound lack of historical knowledge about the own nation.

[Nihil]

2. +1 (n/t)

[AuntPatsy]

3. Pretty much on the mark