Texas Drought Hammers Ogallala

Texas Tribune, via Big Picture Agriculture:

The 16-county High Plains Underground Water Conservation District reported this week that its monitoring wells showed an average decline last year of 2.56 feet — the third-largest in the district’s 61-year history, and three times the average rate over the past decade. Farmers pumped more water during the drought to compensate for the lack of rainfall, which was about two-thirds less than normal last year in Lubbock and Amarillo.
Further north in the Panhandle, along the state's border with Oklahoma, a second water district also registered large declines in the Ogallala. Steve Walthour, the general manager of the eight-county North Plains Groundwater Conservation District, calculated on Monday that the average drop in the Ogallala reached 2.9 feet last year.
"We’ve seen some pretty heavy declines," Walthour said, noting that the west side of his district got hit especially hard.

Meanwhile, NPR reviews the seven-year Texas drought in the '50s.  Seven years, I get killed by the idea of a seven week drought.  But lowering the Ogallala is really just water mining.  That aquifer will never be replenished as fast as it's used, and when it's gone, so is Texas panhandle agriculture.