Aquifers at critical low, report says

Residents looking for their next step

LITTLE ROCK — Groundwater depletion in northeast Arkansas has reached such a critical stage that some area residents are assessing local support for a more comprehensive response to the problem.

Water-level data from 14 counties west of Crowley’s Ridge indicate that the state’s two major aquifers are being pumped at a rate “which is far above sustainable,” according to the Arkansas Ground Water Protection and Management Report for 2008. The report was distributed late last month to members of the Arkansas Natural Resources Commission.

Water is the lifeblood for agriculture, which sustains the area’s economy.

“This is something that we’ve known about” ever since the 1970s, when rice production in the region expanded, said Tom Wimpy, a Harrisburg farmer and member of the Poinsett County Conservation District board.

“We are in an area that probably should be considered as a ‘critical groundwater area,’” he said.

Such a designation by the Natural Resources Commission encourages local officials to develop an action plan, provides state tax incentives and prioritizes the region for federal assistance, he said.

Alec Farmer, a commissioner from Jonesboro who owns and manages a farm in the study area, believes critical-area designation would be advantageous for the hardest-hit areas.

Definitely that’s something that would benefit the farmers and the region as a whole,” said Farmer, who is working with local officials to evaluate support for such a designation.

Inaction could lead to regulatory alternatives such as water rationing - which farmers and state and local officials want to avoid.

Arkansas ranks No. 4 among the 50 states in groundwater use, relying on aquifers for 66 percent of its water needs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. About 98 percent of the groundwater is drawn from the Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer and the deeper Sparta-Memphis aquifer, both in eastern Arkansas.

Between 1965 and 2005, groundwater use in the state increased 510 percent, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. In 2005, Arkansas drew an estimated 7.5 billion gallons of groundwater daily, enough water to fill about 12,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The largest use of water was for irrigation, which accounted for 92 percent of all groundwater withdrawals in 2005. Water used for growing rice totaled 4.6 billion gallons daily, or about 40 percent of all water use. Arkansas produces about half of all U.S. rice.

CONES OF DEPRESSION

Aquifer depletion in northeast Arkansas’ Cache study area is comparable to depletion in two other study areas, one near El Dorado and another near Stuttgart.

“You’ve got a problem there in Arkansas ... which is stunning, given that you get 49 inches of rain a year,” said Robert Glennon, professor of law and public policy at the University of Arizona’s Rogers College of Law and author of Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It.

“Think of an aquifer as a giant milkshake glass, and think of each well as a straw in the glass,” Glennon said. If you allow “a limitless number of straws in a single glass,” eventually you’re going to exhaust the supply, he said.

Arkansas does have a state water plan, last revised in 1990, which attempts to protect groundwater through programs that stress conservation, education and a shift to surface-water use.

The plan focuses on the Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer, used to irrigate most of the state’s major crops, and the deeper Sparta-Memphis aquifer, eastern Arkansas’ primary source of drinking water and, increasingly, a secondary source of irrigation water.

In January 1996, five counties in south-central Arkansas - Bradley, Calhoun, Columbia, Ouachita and Union - were designated as a critical groundwater area, in accordance with the Arkansas Ground Water Protection and Management Act of 1991.

Large industrial withdrawals from the Sparta aquifer had led to consistently falling groundwater levels and the creation of a rapidly growing cone-shaped valley in the water table known as a “cone of depression.”

By shifting to the Ouachita River, Union County water users have helped the water level in one Sparta well rebound by about one-quarter of the total drawdown since 1922.

A similar declaration was made in June 1998 for Arkansas, Jefferson and Prairie counties and parts of Lonoke, Pulaski and White counties, where rapid depletion was occurring in the alluvial and Sparta aquifers.

Meanwhile, the Grand Prairie Area Demonstration Project - so named because it was designed to serve as a model for other irrigation projects - has been stalled for years because of federal funding delays and opposition from some conservation groups.

The goal of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project is to protect the alluvial aquifer by diverting excess water from the White River to about 264,000 acres of farmland through a series of pumping stations, pipelines and canals.

“We said we would be out of water in the alluvial aquifer in 2015,” said Dennis Carman, director and chief engineer of the White River Irrigation District. He noted that has already happened in some parts of the Grand Prairie.

A companion irrigation project in the Bayou Meto basin would divert excess Arkansas River water to about 268,000 acres of cropland in Arkansas, Jefferson, Lonoke, Prairie and Pulaski counties.

A third Corps of Engineers project still under study, the Boeuf-Tensas (pronounced BEHF-ten-saw), would divert surface water from the Arkansas River - and possibly the Mississippi River - to approximately 800,000 acres of cropland in Ashley, Chicot, Desha, Drew, Jefferson and Lincoln counties.

SUSTAINABLE YIELD

The Cache study area in northeast Arkansas incorporates four counties - Jackson, Monroe, Phillips and Woodruff - plus portions of 10 additional counties - Clay, Craighead, Cross,Greene, Independence, Lawrence, Lee, Poinsett, Randolph and St. Francis.

West of Crowley’s Ridge and east of the Ozark Plateau and White River, the area includes seven of Arkansas’ top 10 groundwater-using counties and seven of the state’s top 10 rice-producing counties.

Between 1998 and 2008, water levels in the study area’s alluvial aquifer fell by an average of more than seven feet, ranging from a loss of nearly 13 feet in western Poinsett County to a gain of more than 8 feet in eastern Independence County.

Water-level declines were recorded in 108 of 121 alluvial wells monitored by the Natural Resources Commission and the U.S. Geological Survey.

During the same decade, water levels in the Cache study area’s Memphis Sand aquifer fell by an average of nearly 10 feet, with all nine monitored wells showing declines.

Water withdrawals have exceeded the aquifer’s “sustainable yield,” said Todd Fugitt, geology supervisor with the Natural Resources Commission.

“‘Sustainable yield’ is the development and use of groundwater resources in a manner that can be maintained for an indefinite time without causing unacceptable environmental, economic or social consequences.”

Since 2001 - when the critical-area designation failed to win commission approval because of local fears about government regulation - aquifer conditions in the study area have deteriorated.

Intensive pumping of the alluvial aquifer has created a cone of depression that extends from western Poinsett County to western Lee and eastern Monroe counties. A similar depression also has developed in the Memphis Sand aquifer, from southwest Poinsett County to northwest Cross County.

By 2002, these two cones had coalesced into a single depression, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Although the staff at the Natural Resources Commission has seriously considered critical-area designation for the past three years, now area residents are expressing interest, said Earl Smith, chief of the water resources management division at the Natural Resources Commission.

“It’s the first time that we’ve been approached by the local people,” Smith said.

But some in the area, like Charles Givens, who bought Weiner-based Cart Well Co. Inc. in the mid-1950s, aren’t worried.

“There’s still a lot of water up in northeast Arkansas,” Givens said.

“There’s going to be a lot of farming up here for a long time because it’s going to take a long time to deplete this water supply.”

CARROTS OR STICKS?

Conditions could be worse, Harrisburg farmer Wimpy said.

“This would have been even more progressed had we not started putting in place conservation practices over this past 30 years,” he said.

Many Cache area farmers have built reservoirs, constructed systems to capture runoff irrigation water for reuse, leveled their land to improve irrigation efficiency and improved irrigation techniques, Wimpy said.

But geological conditions pose a real challenge, he said.

“It’s a silt-loam soil over a clay pan, so you don’t have percolation of the water back down into the aquifer, which makes it wonderful for rice production,”where holding water on a field is important, Wimpy said.

“But we get very little surface recharge because of that impermeable layer,” he said.

There is no “silver bullet” that will solve the study area’s water needs, water resources chief Smith said.

But Wimpy believes that area farmers need to use more surface water, drawing from the L’Anguille River and its tributaries.

Further improvements to irrigation efficiency are important, said Kalven Trice, state conservationist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

“Some tough decisions have to be made over the next 10 to 15 years,” Trice said.

The Natural Resource Commission’s 2008 groundwater report minces no words about the severity of eastern Arkansas’ aquifer problems.

“If conservation and the development of excess surface water are not successfully implemented in the impaired areas in the very near future, the State will have to consider regulatory alternatives to preserve the aquifers at a sustainable level,” the report states.

Charles Glover, chairman of the Poinsett County Conservation District, said he would like to use carrots rather than sticks to address the problem.

Critical-area designation would provide a number of carrots, Glover said.

However, it remains to be seen whether corrective action will be taken soon enough, said irrigation district manager Carman.

“Groundwater doesn’t have a sponsor anywhere ... until such time that you’re out of it.”

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