The two-year drawdown of Falcon Lake is only one symptom of the Drought of ‘96 – a slowly gathering crisis that is putting huge strain on the water supplies of the fast-growing cities of the Southwest and on the farm-and-cattle regions of the southern Plains as well. From Los Angeles to Corpus Christi, from Brownsville to Nebraska, the drought pits state against state, city dweller against farmer and farmers against a global weather system that has turned suddenly hostile toward man. Severe to extreme drought conditions now prevail across the whole southwestern quadrant of the United States, a region that includes southern California, southern Nevada, all of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas and most of Utah, Colorado and Oklahoma. The drought has afflicted some parts of the region for up to five years and other areas for as little as 10 months. But whatever its duration, climatologists agree there is no end in sight. ““The expectation is that this thing is going to continue through the summer and into the fall,’’ says Dr. Don Wilhite of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Neb. ““Beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess.’'
What’s going on here, experts like Wilhite say, is a reverse El Nino effect. El Nino (““the Christ Child’’) is a huge weather system in the western Pacific that, in a good year, spawns welcome winter rains in the Southwestern states and the Plains. When El Nino does not appear – and last year he didn’t – the result is even less rainfall in a region that is naturally among the driest in the world. From August 1995 to May of this year, much of the Southwest and the southern Plains region recorded virtually no rainfall or snow. That dried out the soil and set the stage for a deepening drought.
In Texas, Oklahoma, eastern Colorado and western Kan- sas, the lack of rainfall fairly crushed the 1996 winter-wheat crop. It also led to a significant shortfall in the supply of cattle feed, which forced many ranchers to cut back their herds. ““Cattle is a $5 billion-a-year industry in Texas,’’ says Texas agriculture commissioner Rick Perry. ““The turmoil this industry is going through is causing a liquidation of historic proportions.’’ Perry says the damage to Texas agribusiness has already reached $2.4 billion and could rise to $6.5 billion – which would make the ‘96 drought the most costly natural disaster in the state’s history.
What is saving farmers and ranchers from bankruptcy is irrigation – irrigation on a scale so large it beggars the imagination. For 30 years, farmers from Montana to west Texas have been pumping water from a vast underground reservoir known as the Ogallala Aquifer. The water in this aquifer was trapped during the last ice age, and it is not replenished much by rainfall or surface water; water levels in some portions of the aquifer have dropped 40 feet in the past 15 years. In south-central Texas, cities and ranchers tap a different pool known as the Edwards Aquifer.
But given mushrooming urban growth – San Antonio’s population has tripled since the 1950s – the current drought is straining underground water supplies as never before. Author Marc Reisner, an expert on the epic struggle to bring water to the West, says states like Texas, Nevada and Arizona are facing a long-term water shortage that ultimately threatens the future of irrigated agriculture. ““The drought has fast-forwarded the inevitable,’’ Reisner says. ““Which is that you’re going to see agriculture in much of that area go out of business permanently. That’s particularly true in the lower end of the Ogallala Aquifer, on the High Plains south of Lubbock and in eastern New Mexico. What they’re doing is unsustainable in the long run – and the question is, how long is the run?’'
Water wars are a familiar story all across the West – but this year’s drought is reviving the old hostilities. Despite a complicated legal battle dating back to the 1940s, farmers in Texas and New Mexico are once again wrangling over the Pecos River. In 1988, Texas won a U.S. Supreme Court decision that increased its farmers’ share of the river’s annual flow – which may mean that the supply of irrigation water is about to run out for farmers in southeastern New Mexico. ““We’re basically going to be out of water in two months,’’ says Tom Davis of the Carlsbad, N.M., Irrigation District. ““The Supreme Court decree is holding a gun to our heads.’’ Henry McDonald, who raises cotton and alfalfa near Loving, N.M., says, ““How can we give Texas that water when we don’t have any rain? Before I go losing a bunch of money, I’m going to start my pumps. If I have to go to jail, I’ll go to jail.''
The fear now is that the drought could create another catastrophe like the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. ““I remember the day the dust storm came in,’’ says Doyle Strong, 66, a third-generation farmer who lives near Beaver, Okla. ““It just rolled over the house. We had an oil lamp on the table, and when we sat down for the noon meal, we couldn’t see the lamp.’’ Strong’s family survived the Dirty Thirties on sheer tenacity, and he has a better sense than most of the land’s fragility. Sustained drought kills the buffalo grass and leaves the soil exposed to wind; so does cultivation. While farm methods have improved, many of the trees that were planted as windbreaks in the aftermath of the Dust Bowl have been ripped out, while the number of acres under cultivation has been hugely expanded because of irrigation. The Plains, in short, are arguably more vulnerable to drought and wind than they were in 1936 – which means everyone should be praying for El Nino.
