Let us drop in today on our old friend, the Ogallala Aquifer, the only thing that keeps everything from Illinois to California from becoming the surface of the moon. Usually, the aquifer gets in the news these days because TransCanada and the entire Republican party, and more than a few Democrats, want to run a pipeline full of the world's dirtiest fossil fuel through a portion of it. We can all argue about the merits of the pipeline, but I hope I speak for everyone in the class when I say that we should be worried that the aquifer may be running dryanyway.

Rex Buchanan, interim director of the KGS, recently completed an annual tour of the 1,400 wells that tap into the Ogallala in western Kansas. He says overall levels in January 2013 dropped about 3½ feet. Declines in January 2012 averaged 4.25 feet. Buchanan says the water level declines were sharper in northwestern Kansas, which was especially dry in 2012. In southwestern Kansas, which saw a little more rain last year than the year before, the decrease wasn't quite as severe.

Concern for the aquifer predates the fight over the pipeline. Those parts of Kansas under discussion here have been experiencing drought conditions for quite some time. (This, of course, has something to do with the Great Climate Change Hoax.) The farmers draw more water to irrigate their land. The government cracks down. Farmers then get mad at the government which, in Kansas, anyway, is completely controlled by politicians who dislike the government as much as the farmers do. So, in a response to the complaints about the jackboot of water regulation, the politicians knuckle poor people a little more and everybody cheers. Ain't democracy grand?

There are efforts on the ground to solve the problem. Crop rotation has been vigorous. Different forms of irrigation have been employed. Some farmers have taken to planting corn that is genetically engineered to need less water, which opens up an entirely different can of worms.

In June, a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists questioned whether genetically engineered crops would play a central role in tackling drought and water stress anytime soon. Developing and testing such crops can take 10 to 15 years. The seeds are often more expensive. And the benefits appear modest so far - the report estimated that Monsanto's DroughtGard would boost U.S. corn productivity by just 1 percent. (That's assuming that the corn performs 6 percent better than conventional varieties under moderate drought and gets planted on a certain fraction of corn fields.) "There's little to suggest that genetic engineering will make a major contribution to drought tolerance and water-efficiency use in the next five to 10 years," report author Doug Gurian-Sherman said. "But 20 years down the line? I don't know."

And the pipeline is still a terrible idea.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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