> But Kansas water rights are based on the “first in time — first in right” principle, which means the earliest users are given priority.
It's not the "earliest users", but the earliest plot of land, municipality, et cetera that gets priority. You can stake your claim and transfer it from what I can tell.
I honestly don't understand how this doesn't fall afoul of the Article 1, Section 10 Titles of Nobility clause. I asked a lawyer who wrote about this clause once in an email and he thought it odd to think that this is a violation of the Titles of Nobility clause. But shouldn't any heritable and transferable privilege to a public good be considered a "title of nobility"?
Something equivalent to manorial lordship. The title itself would be "senior water rights holder". The right granted by this heritable privilege is the right to first service. A first service which may result in an inferior holder of water rights not getting any water at all.
It's important to note that, at least some, constitutional scholars see a focus on an actual "title" as beside the point. A state can call Michael Jackson the "King of Pop" without violating the clause because this title does not actually grant noble privilege in any way. It's just a name. However granting a heritable privilege that is not available to anyone meeting a similar, non-heritable requirement (such as a driver's license, which is theoretically equally available to all), does violate the titles of nobility clauses even if no actual "title" is granted with it.
Western Kansas seems to average in the upper teens to mid 20s of inches of rainfall per typical year (drier years do come as the article notes). If it could be husbanded well you'd think that would be sufficient rainfall to grow these crops.
That’s an average calendar year most likely. A corn crops roughly needs 20 inches of water to be viable. Corn is usually only grown in 1/3 of the year.
We just shouldn’t subsidize crops in this region. If people want to make a run at it, more power to them and it may work in some years. But no subsidy
For now. And American oversupply stabilizes other regions of the earth.the arab spring rebellion started of as a protest against rising bread prices.The bread prices rose due to American food aid being redirected to biofuels. Good intentions do not transfer to good politics. If change is necessary make it gradually so the world can adapt to it.
"Ogallala Aquifer... is recharged on a geological time scale... That depletion is accelerated by climate change and continued over pumping of water."
Is it obligatory to put in stuff about climate change in spite of the fact that it's barely relevant?
We are over pumping when we exceed the replenishment rate. And that is going on in just about every aquifer I have heard about. Climate change has nothing to do with it. Almond tree growing, ease of well drilling, and improper use of the pure water have more to do with it (e.g., https://www.protectouraquifer.org/issues/poas-fight-to-stop-...)
In general I understand and agree with your point. With respect to recharging aquifers, climate change can have an effect in two ways:
1) Some plants are far better at recharging aquifers than others (indeed, some will basically prevent aquifer recharge). Climate change, along with probably the more significant human element here, will affect what plants grow here.
2) Rainfall. https://climate.k-state.edu/precip/county/ I'm not seeing huge changes over the last 129 years, so maybe this really isn't affecting recharge of the aquifer from Kansas at least.
It's my understanding that there's no meaningful way we can recharge the aquifers:
> Aquifers hold water in between bits of sand, gravel, or clay. When the amount of clay in an aquifer is particularly high, the grains arrange themselves like plates thrown haphazardly in a sink—they’ve basically got random orientations, and the water fills in the spaces between the grains. But if you start extracting water from an aquifer, those spaces collapse and the grains draw closer together. “Those plates rearrange themselves into more like a stack of dinner plates that you put in your cupboard,” says Sneed. “It takes a lot less space, obviously, to stack the plates that way. And so that's the compaction of the aquifer system that then results in land subsidence at the surface.”
>
> But wouldn’t pumping more water back into the aquifer force the clay plates back to their random, spacey orientations? Unfortunately, no. “It'll press those grains apart a little bit—you'll get a little bit of expansion in the aquifer system represented as uplift on the land surface. But it's a tiny amount,” says Sneed. We’re talking maybe three quarters of an inch of movement. “They're still stacked like the plates in your cupboard,” she continues.
Increased temperatures also affect evaporation rates (and hence how much watering needs to be done). Climate change and the future of farming are pretty intimately connected.
43 million acres of land are farmed for ethanol. Key political positions depend on the corn and ag lobby support, including Iowa. We won’t remove these subsidies, we’ll only destroy demand with rapid EV uptake that destroys gasoline demand for light vehicles (and the ethanol blended into it).
Agree, but from a political standpoint it's cheap. The subsidies are overall not expensive and it's good to incentivize over production of crops from a nation security standpoint.
Below comments are correct, EVs will ultimately be the equalizer
OK, I started reading the article, and then found this gem:
> The Kansas aqueduct is a nutty idea, but one that has taken root among some individuals in western Kansas desperate for a solution to continue irrigation after the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. Aside from its expense and impracticality, it is a regressive idea that harkens back to the days of ditches and avoids a conversation about us having squandered the resource beneath our feet.
Like, WTF? How the hell a "conversation" can solve the depletion issue? An aqueduct is a possible solution, yet it's bad because it can solve the issue?
They are going to deplete the river, like the Colorado river, losing most of it through evaporation. This is a stupid idea beacause it is stupid in the south west.
China already did a project like this to move water from the wet part to the dry, because their leaders were eager engineers and wanted to do it. Turns out that the wet part isn't making enough water to the dry part now because of climate change. Same thing would happen here. The rockies already create a rain shadow over the great plains, there isn't a way to get water from the other side of the rockies, because that is what it would take. and Cali has been in a drought for along time too. There just isn't water available.
Especially with the latest US Supreme Court Rulings, the agencies cannot do anything, it is up to just Kansas or Congress. And without a National Commitment, Kansas alone will be unable to do much.
At some point, people have to come to terms with their poor choices. Building in a flood zone, building in a dense forest and farming in an arid land all seem like poor choices for long term success. However, there may be some good to come of depopulating SW Kansas. With the farmland abandoned, maybe we can finally give it back to the bison?
Why should they care when FEMA will just keep bailing everyone out, subsidized by everyone else's tax dollars. Just look at New Orleans, but now imagine it scaled up to the entire state of Florida...
No, actully, people can jusdy keep doing stupid things because we have such a largesse of basic comfort. They arnt going to suddenly change and fascism.is likely the.equal choice than any.ecologically smart.one'
Not a bad thing. The aquifer will be depleted, existing use cases will die, and solving this can be revisited decades or centuries from now after the electorate and representatives have turned over. The outcome is based on choices made.
Sibling comment mentions returning the land to nature; new expanded national lands would be great. If anything, efforts to accelerate the depletion should be undertaken to speedrun the outcome. This avoids the slow decline of unnecessary intensive farming of the land, and pushes the system to failure more rapidly.
While math challenged dreamers get lost in quaint medieval Solar & Wind (and Fusion scalable some day don't hold your breath) fantasies...
I invest my dreams in modern civilization and molten salt thorium breeders built along existing corridors of grid transmission lines with no need to be sited near water (or even near people if they're skittish about it). Growing a massive HVDC grid that spans the continent and ultimately the globe, which feeds legacy HVAC tuned grids.
While "too cheap to meter" has been abused as a cheap sound bite, the real objective is to put energy on the grid steadily and with every new ~3GW plant along the corridors the net-cost of electricity (aka cost of personal and business living) will decrease over time until terawatts of energy capacity are being introduced on a regular basis. The Government will have to be involved on some level, but not the current regime that seeks to impose financial burdens to curtail "growth", which brain-dead people have declared as synonymous with "harming the Earth". They have been convinced that "people are sh*t" and only the worst ideas will prevail in the end. So why try? Throw a monkey-wrench in it! And surely me and my family will be part of the elite entitled to the thin gruel of energy!
No, it is recognized that the energy density of clean energy matters. And for molten salt nuclear it is a ratio of a million to one over a carbon-hydrogen bond. And the cleanliness of wind and solar are dismal considering manufacture, tiny yield, ecological disruption and the political corruption involved in selling it as any kind of 'solution'. Ironically without nuclear we cannot even afford the energy budget to recycle the parts in wind and solar! And with it we wouldn't need wind & solar. Molten salt nuclear in tiny buildings carries no inherent risk of explosion or contamination of the wider area. Any damage (inevitably caused by nasty people, not the process itself) results in hot material in a very small area waiting for cleanup.
The delivery of practically-unmetered energy to the DC grid means that Big Projects become possible, projects that you know require massive energy unless you are insane. Such as finally permitting EVs to roam the landscape, a renaissance of continent spanning electric rail and the electrical generation of separation of synfuels and fertilizer to power legacy uses like aviation and shipping... without ground extraction of dwindling petroleum products. But "natural gas will last forever!" they whisper to each other as they use it to supplant wind & solar to an extent that is practically fake.
And one such Big Project is recharging the Ogalla Aquifer with fresh water piped from the North, where polar weather patterns replenish supply. Such a massive aqueduct that farmers can irrigate directly from it with the massive surplus returning to the aquifer itself.
In place of being hysterical as doomsayers rattle about global temperature, a practical application of massive energy to a practical result, monitoring the gradual RISE in the aquifer towards its historical level rather than its 'inexorable' fall. Proponents of energy scarcity are actually pushing for more dust bowls as we just retreat from the lands we have changed, rather than heal them.
It is just a dream, and I'm always being flamed by people who hate plants (CO2) and yearn for some brown Earth of yesteryear. I am just too old, for I remember old times when hippies could have been sold on 'greening the Earth and increasing crop yields' as a good thing.
Readit News
It's not the "earliest users", but the earliest plot of land, municipality, et cetera that gets priority. You can stake your claim and transfer it from what I can tell.
I honestly don't understand how this doesn't fall afoul of the Article 1, Section 10 Titles of Nobility clause. I asked a lawyer who wrote about this clause once in an email and he thought it odd to think that this is a violation of the Titles of Nobility clause. But shouldn't any heritable and transferable privilege to a public good be considered a "title of nobility"?
It's an intriguing idea. Now spend even one minute thinking deeply about the Equal Protection Clause, and drown in sorrow.
It's important to note that, at least some, constitutional scholars see a focus on an actual "title" as beside the point. A state can call Michael Jackson the "King of Pop" without violating the clause because this title does not actually grant noble privilege in any way. It's just a name. However granting a heritable privilege that is not available to anyone meeting a similar, non-heritable requirement (such as a driver's license, which is theoretically equally available to all), does violate the titles of nobility clauses even if no actual "title" is granted with it.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C8-2/...
We just shouldn’t subsidize crops in this region. If people want to make a run at it, more power to them and it may work in some years. But no subsidy
Deleted Comment
Is it obligatory to put in stuff about climate change in spite of the fact that it's barely relevant?
We are over pumping when we exceed the replenishment rate. And that is going on in just about every aquifer I have heard about. Climate change has nothing to do with it. Almond tree growing, ease of well drilling, and improper use of the pure water have more to do with it (e.g., https://www.protectouraquifer.org/issues/poas-fight-to-stop-...)
1) Some plants are far better at recharging aquifers than others (indeed, some will basically prevent aquifer recharge). Climate change, along with probably the more significant human element here, will affect what plants grow here.
2) Rainfall. https://climate.k-state.edu/precip/county/ I'm not seeing huge changes over the last 129 years, so maybe this really isn't affecting recharge of the aquifer from Kansas at least.
Some parts of the aquifer seem to be recharging well. I know that Texas has some recharge locations, but I wonder what Nebraska is doing right. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/nation...
> Aquifers hold water in between bits of sand, gravel, or clay. When the amount of clay in an aquifer is particularly high, the grains arrange themselves like plates thrown haphazardly in a sink—they’ve basically got random orientations, and the water fills in the spaces between the grains. But if you start extracting water from an aquifer, those spaces collapse and the grains draw closer together. “Those plates rearrange themselves into more like a stack of dinner plates that you put in your cupboard,” says Sneed. “It takes a lot less space, obviously, to stack the plates that way. And so that's the compaction of the aquifer system that then results in land subsidence at the surface.” > > But wouldn’t pumping more water back into the aquifer force the clay plates back to their random, spacey orientations? Unfortunately, no. “It'll press those grains apart a little bit—you'll get a little bit of expansion in the aquifer system represented as uplift on the land surface. But it's a tiny amount,” says Sneed. We’re talking maybe three quarters of an inch of movement. “They're still stacked like the plates in your cupboard,” she continues.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-ongoing-collapse-of-the-worl...
https://www.cardin.senate.gov/press-releases/end-subsidies-f...
https://www.taxpayer.net/energy-natural-resources/understand...
https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/laws/ETH?state=US
Below comments are correct, EVs will ultimately be the equalizer
> The Kansas aqueduct is a nutty idea, but one that has taken root among some individuals in western Kansas desperate for a solution to continue irrigation after the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. Aside from its expense and impracticality, it is a regressive idea that harkens back to the days of ditches and avoids a conversation about us having squandered the resource beneath our feet.
Like, WTF? How the hell a "conversation" can solve the depletion issue? An aqueduct is a possible solution, yet it's bad because it can solve the issue?
In the case of the aquifer, it's clear. It's a finite resource that is going to be depleted sooner rather than later.
But that doesn't apply to diverting water from the Missouri River.
I guess the author just wants people to self-flagellate and repent their sins, rather than look for solutions?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_Water
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2021/07/19/massive-plumbing-system...
Sibling comment mentions returning the land to nature; new expanded national lands would be great. If anything, efforts to accelerate the depletion should be undertaken to speedrun the outcome. This avoids the slow decline of unnecessary intensive farming of the land, and pushes the system to failure more rapidly.
I invest my dreams in modern civilization and molten salt thorium breeders built along existing corridors of grid transmission lines with no need to be sited near water (or even near people if they're skittish about it). Growing a massive HVDC grid that spans the continent and ultimately the globe, which feeds legacy HVAC tuned grids.
While "too cheap to meter" has been abused as a cheap sound bite, the real objective is to put energy on the grid steadily and with every new ~3GW plant along the corridors the net-cost of electricity (aka cost of personal and business living) will decrease over time until terawatts of energy capacity are being introduced on a regular basis. The Government will have to be involved on some level, but not the current regime that seeks to impose financial burdens to curtail "growth", which brain-dead people have declared as synonymous with "harming the Earth". They have been convinced that "people are sh*t" and only the worst ideas will prevail in the end. So why try? Throw a monkey-wrench in it! And surely me and my family will be part of the elite entitled to the thin gruel of energy!
No, it is recognized that the energy density of clean energy matters. And for molten salt nuclear it is a ratio of a million to one over a carbon-hydrogen bond. And the cleanliness of wind and solar are dismal considering manufacture, tiny yield, ecological disruption and the political corruption involved in selling it as any kind of 'solution'. Ironically without nuclear we cannot even afford the energy budget to recycle the parts in wind and solar! And with it we wouldn't need wind & solar. Molten salt nuclear in tiny buildings carries no inherent risk of explosion or contamination of the wider area. Any damage (inevitably caused by nasty people, not the process itself) results in hot material in a very small area waiting for cleanup.
The delivery of practically-unmetered energy to the DC grid means that Big Projects become possible, projects that you know require massive energy unless you are insane. Such as finally permitting EVs to roam the landscape, a renaissance of continent spanning electric rail and the electrical generation of separation of synfuels and fertilizer to power legacy uses like aviation and shipping... without ground extraction of dwindling petroleum products. But "natural gas will last forever!" they whisper to each other as they use it to supplant wind & solar to an extent that is practically fake.
And one such Big Project is recharging the Ogalla Aquifer with fresh water piped from the North, where polar weather patterns replenish supply. Such a massive aqueduct that farmers can irrigate directly from it with the massive surplus returning to the aquifer itself.
In place of being hysterical as doomsayers rattle about global temperature, a practical application of massive energy to a practical result, monitoring the gradual RISE in the aquifer towards its historical level rather than its 'inexorable' fall. Proponents of energy scarcity are actually pushing for more dust bowls as we just retreat from the lands we have changed, rather than heal them.
It is just a dream, and I'm always being flamed by people who hate plants (CO2) and yearn for some brown Earth of yesteryear. I am just too old, for I remember old times when hippies could have been sold on 'greening the Earth and increasing crop yields' as a good thing.
Dead Comment