I will not miss: Draining the Ogallala with every sip of water.

(Prepare for the rant of an environmental historian. I don't care if you don't like it.)

When Betty Boop last visited Lubbock, all she wanted to do is go to the Leisure Pool. But of course, it was the one week that Lubbock gets four sequential days of rain! Unprecedented! And every time I complained, everyone kept saying, "We need the rain!"

Ya know what? Fuck off. 

Who needs the rains? Who? Your lawn? FUCK. OFF. Holy shit fuck off. I hope your lawn dies. I hope your lawn withers and dies. Your lawn is an unnatural waste of water and time. Lawns are a cultural custom rooted in the climate of the East. Lawns grow naturally in the East and Midwest because there is enough rain. My dad has been actively trying to kill our lawn for 20 years but it just keeps growing! Lawns are not meant to grow in the West. So if your lawn needs rain, I don't care.  

Ogallala Aquifer size and scope

Who really needs the rain? Not humans in Lubbock, that's for damn sure. Humans in Lubbock are doing just fine by sucking the Ogallala Aquifer dry. FYI, the Ogallala Aquifer is an underground aquifer spanning from South Dakota to Texas. It was likely created  approximately 10-12 million years ago when Rocky Mountains were moving and shaping and the glaciers were receding. This left behind a moist layer of sediment and billions of gallons of glacial water. The Ogallala hydrates the majority of semi-arid western states because those areas do not receive enough natural moisture to support human life. 

West Texas naturally receives around 15-20 inches of rain, 25 inches in a good year, in comparison to 50-60 inches of rain in New York or Indiana. So Lubbock is a semi-arid/arid climate, depending on the total rainfall in a particular year. Semi-arid climates were considered sub-marginal and unsuitable for human habitation until the early twentieth century. This was when a few brilliant land developers and boosters began spreading the myth that "rain follows the plow." Literally....

As Charles Dana Wilber wrote in The Great Valleys and Prairies of Nebraska and the Northwest in 1881: 

...a new army of frontier farmers...turn over the prairie sod, and after deep plowing and receiving the rain and moisture, present a new surface of green, growing crops instead of the dry, hardbaked earth covered with sparse buffalo grass. No one can question or doubt the inevitable effect of this cool condensing surface upon the moisture in the atmosphere as it moves over by the Western winds. A reduction of temperature must at once occur, accompanied by the usual phenomena of showers. The chief agency in this transformation is agriculture. To be more concise. Rain follows the plow.

...it would appear that deserts and arid lands are not only temporary conditions of the earth's surface, but that, on the other hand, such unpromising areas can, by the industry and skill of man, be' changed into fertile and productive fields...by the plow, can transform it, in any country, into farm areas. With the power in our own hands to make the wilderness and waste places glad, and to make even a desert blossom as a garden with roses.

Ok so just to review, the theory goes that when homesteaders in the arid west turned over the grass, the sod released "vapors" and "condensation" which traveled up into the atmosphere and fed the clouds, thereby producing rain. So in order to increase the annual precipitation in an area, people simply needed to start farming and it would change the region's climate, permanently. 

Seriously? Fucking seriously? 

Average Annual Precipitation

Nevertheless, this bullshit helped settlement in the entire West. And this tangent is just to say, the lack of water in West Texas is not new information. The notion that we have been having a "drought" for the past few years is highly suspect to me. I think we are just experiencing the natural rain fluctuations of an arid region. West Texas simply does not receive a lot of precipitation.


As for "needing the rain," our long term supply of water is certainly in jeopardy, given that the Ogallala water table dropped over a foot and a half in 2013 alone. But the unsustainable rate of depletion of the Ogallala is due to excessive human consumption that the natural climate cannot manage. The area is known for having a HUGE cotton industry that is completely dependent on irrigation. The irrigation fluids are coming directly out of the Ogallala. Who had the bright idea to grow thirsty-ass cotton in the desert? What the fuck! The rate of extraction from irrigation vastly exceeds the rate of recharge. This is not simply due to lack of rain. It would take about 100,000 years for the Ogallala to fully replenish with drastically reduced consumption and average rainfall levels.

Regardless, our reliable supply of water on a daily basis in Lubbock has nothing to do with precipitation. An estimated 2.3 million people rely on the Ogallala for their daily water throughout the West. They can keep using it unabated, regardless of rainfall. So every single time I turned on the water, I felt guilty. Granted, I have always been sensitive about my water use, no matter where I lived. Part of this is because of my environmental consciousness and part of this is because my dad screamed at me, "TURN THE WATER OFF! I'M NOT MADE OF MONEY!" anytime the water ran for more than three seconds while I was growing up. But when I turn on the water in Lubbock, I literally imagined the water being pumped from some prehistoric source with underground caverns and stalactites. Obviously that was wrong, but still, I felt so much water guilt. 

The public relationship to water in the East is totally different. Property owners generally pay a flat tax/fee for water based on occupants, but the actual consumption level is irrelevant. Water is not metered in the East. I have a problem with this system as well. Studies consistently show that water meter, or monitoring gallon use, helps reduce consumption. So maybe people would use less here if they charged by the gallon. Everyone in Lubbock bitched about water cost and I was just like, "Um yeah! You should pay for it! Water isn't meant to be here!" At least the system was metered because water is a scarce commodity in the West.

So while water use is undoubtedly wasteful in the humid East due to lack of metering, at least I know that water is plentiful here. I walk outside and the ground squishes. It rains every fricking day. Rivers overflow regularly. We got water here. So I feel less guilty every time I turn on the faucet.