----- forwarded message -----
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 05:15:50 -0600
From: Teresa Binstock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: aquifer: Arkansas Rice Farmers Run Dry; Remedy Stirs Debate (water wars 18)
"Like many here, he traces his lineage to the farmers who arrived in the early
1900's, starting a century of pumping from the aquifer at rates that could not
be sustained."
"...the critical problem is that right now, we're facing an imminent aquifer
failure."
Arkansas Rice Farmers Run Dry; Remedy Stirs Debate
By DOUGLAS JEHL
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/national/11RICE.html
ULM, Ark., Nov. 5 -- Rice farmers like John Kerksieck are on the brink of
draining one of Arkansas' biggest aquifers dry.
That alone is troublesome, in a state that gets almost 50 inches of rain a year.
But even more confounding -- since these Southern farmers will not be the last to
find themselves in such a pickle -- is the question of what to do about it.
Most of the farmers want the government to send them replacement water from the
White River. The Army Corps of Engineers and the state support a plan to spend
more than $200 million in federal money on the project, or about $300,000 a
farmer. It is time, they say, for the government to do in other states what has
long been done in the West -- provide irrigation water to farmers who have no
other resort.
But others are concerned about the precedent such a project would set. If the
government rewards farmers who use up their water here, they say, what is to
stop others from doing the same?
The debate touches on issues of water rights and responsibilities, and spills
over into farm policy, because one issue is whether taxpayers should have to
spend more to help grow rice, which is already heavily subsidized. It also
involves wrangling about whether the corps, which has been limited to navigation
and flood control, has any business wading into irrigation.
One interest group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, contends the plan is a
boondoggle of the first order.
Farmers here in Arkansas' Grand Prairie, one of the country's richest
rice-growing areas, see it differently. "We really don't have a water problem,"
said Mr. Kerksieck, 42, in hunting garb in anticipation of the duck season,
which rivals rice farming as the Grand Prairie's main preoccupation. Like many
here, he traces his lineage to the farmers who arrived in the early 1900's,
starting a century of pumping from the aquifer at rates that could not be
sustained.
"There's plenty of water in the river," Mr. Kerksieck said. "They've just got to
let us divert it."
Another farmer, Lynn Sickel, 51, said: "I'm a conservative person. But if this
is what it's going to take for highly productive farmland to continue to provide
food nationally and internationally, well, that's the taxpayer's burden."
David Carruth, a local lawyer who had led opposition to the plan, posed the
question a different way. "Why shouldn't we say to these farmers in the Grand
Prairie: `You've known since 1940 that you had a problem with your aquifer, and
you went ahead and overpumped it anyway,' " he said. " `Why should we go ahead
and grant you another resource?"
Neither Congress nor the Bush administration has made a final decision about the
plan, with total cost estimated at $319 million, with the federal government
paying 65 percent. But nearly all sides agree that time for a decision is
running short. Water levels in the shallow aquifer, known as the Alluvial, are
declining at rates so fast that by 2015 there will not be enough left
underground to sustain the area's 1,000 farms, which cover about 250,000 acres
and represent about 5 percent of country's rice production.
The economic impact of such a collapse could surpass $46 million a year, the
corps has estimated.
The Grand Prairie is not the only area in trouble because of declining
groundwater. Underground water accounts for 22 percent of American water use,
and in many areas, including much of the Great Plains, coastal Florida and North
Carolina and parts of the Mississippi Delta, it is being depleted. Even in
eastern Arkansas, whose aquifers are fed by the Mississippi River, overuse has
prompted state officials to designate a second area as critical because of
scarce groundwater.
But the Grand Prairie area is the first whose aquifer problems have prompted the
Corps of Engineers to propose stepping in, a move that many see as an important
test case as water shortages, even in the East, have become common.
"One could take the position that, hey, the farmers are the ones who created
this mess, so why don't we just let their wells go dry and let everybody go
broke, and then the problem will fix itself," G. Alan Perkins, a Little Rock
lawyer and an authority on water law, said. "But the critical problem is that
right now, we're facing an imminent aquifer failure."
Like many states, Arkansas has essentially never limited the amount of water
that farmers can pump from their land. In the last 50 years in the Grand
Prairie, farmers have relied increasingly on irrigation, over and above ample
rains, to increase the yields of their crops. The farmers have increased by
nearly tenfold the amount of water pumped from the Alluvial Aquifer, even as its
level was declining by more than a foot a year, the state Soil and Water
Commission said.
"By allowing limitless access to such a resource, we encourage
overexploitation," said Robert Glennon, a law professor at the University of
Arizona and the author of "Water Follies," a new book on groundwater depletion.
Even now, under the critical area designation, state law permits limits on
pumping only if an alternative source of water is made available to the current
users at equal or lower cost. Arkansas hopes that alternative can be the White
River, but it says it cannot carry out the project without significant federal
help.
"We see groundwater depletion in Arkansas being a major problem, and one that
involves the national interest, and really the only federal agency with the
expertise and ability to deal with it is the corps," Earl T. Smith, chief of the
Arkansas commission's water resources management division, said.
Under the corps' current plan, about 2 percent of water from the White River
would be diverted for farm use, a project that would include pumping stations,
canals and reservoirs. The plan, which the corps said would save the aquifer by
reducing pumping to sustainable levels, has passed an environmental review, but
faces opposition from outdoor and environmental groups like the Arkansas
Wildlife Federation. The groups contend that lower river flows could alter the
habitats of certain fish and migratory birds, including ducks, and thus hurt
fishing and hunting.
Congress has allocated $45 million for the project, and farmers and the State of
Arkansas have spent an additional $11 million. The Bush administration has not
included the plan in its budgets. Although withholding a final decision, the
Office of Management and Budget has limited how the corps can spend money
already allocated for the plan, restricting it to conservation purposes.
Mr. Carruth, the critic of the plan, said a better approach would be to retire
some farmland and to spend federal money on technology to enable farmers to use
water more efficiently. That approach, he says, eases overpumping of the aquifer
without the costly river diversion.
"Why should we subsidize a pump that will sell subsidized water to grow a
subsidized crop?" he asked, noting that federal price guarantees mean that rice
farmers receive $3.10 a bushel for their crop, more than twice the current $1.40
market price.
An analysis by the corps said that without White River water, there was no way
to save enough underground water to continue irrigation at anything but a tiny
fraction of current levels.
The farmers say the goal of maintaining a domestic food and fiber industry, and
avoiding further reliance on foreign suppliers, is well worth the federal cost,
even if it means guaranteeing water and crop payments for their rice.
"There is a long and established history of the federal government being
involved in water resources development and protection" John C. Edwards, the
executive director of the White River Irrigation District, which represents the
1,000 Grand Prairie farmers, said. "There has been a federal interest in
irrigation in 17 Western states. Now that water problems are coming to the East,
we can learn from the past to make this a better project for the future."
Copyright The New York Times Company
