Ogallala

I figured I'd look at the Ogallala Aquifer (not "aquifier"). I live more in an affecting area, than affected; our water flows northeast, to the Platte.

The Ogallala used to be a beach. Seriously: the "old Rocky Mountains" disintegrated, and its sand flowed into the inland American Sea, to such an extent that the Gulf of Mexico is about all that is left of it. So there's a lot of sandstone up in Lyons here. This sandstone and not-so-stone is porous enough that a lot of water got buried between South Dakota and northwest Texas.

As I read up on this, that water is still there... in the Platte watershed, through Nebraska. As we go south, we get more arid. The Ogallala frackers and farmers got to pulling the water up out of there, after the Dust Bowl 1930s. On the farming side it's called "center-pivot irrigation". Might explain those circular-pattern farms we see flying over eastern Colorado into Denver.

There was a move to improve center-pivot efficiency. It worked! Unfortunately it worked so well that those farmers figured they could grow thirstier crops now. "Jevons' Paradox", Wiki tells me.

The frackers are I think pumping that water even further down there, to get the natural gas out. Seems like this is expanding the aquifer more than decreasing it. Mind, then we don't have the water up here anymore. And this water isn't clean.

As for other environmental issues, the Keystone XL pipeline was proposed to cross it. Although as I read the map, its path would cross only the northeastern Nebraskan part of it, which (1) isn't our problem down south and west and (2) those Nebraskans don't even need, themselves. If you oppose the pipeline, you should consider better arguments.

The real pollution risk seems to be the nitrates and phospates, which introduce all manner of microbial life, and their toxic leavings, into the water-table. Salt, too, I imagine.

What we might consider is an underground aqueduct. From the upper-Platte side of the aquifer, over to the Front Range headwaters.