Ogallala Aquifer

More than $67 million in federal grants are going to water infrastructure and workforce development projects in Guymon. Combined, the grants going to the panhandle are the largest amount the U.S. Department of Energy has doled out through its Transmission Siting and Economic Development Grants Program.

Investigate Midwest reviewed hundreds of groundwater well records to determine how the hog industry and the state’s weak water laws are affecting water levels.

This story by Investigate Midwest explores the relationship between locals in and around Guymon and a major employer, Seaboard Foods.

About a quarter of the United States’s irrigated cropland sits on top of the Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains. But water levels are dropping, and states are taking different approaches to monitoring how much groundwater irrigators are pumping out.

After decades of irrigation, the aquifer that makes life possible in dry western Kansas is reaching a critical point. Several counties have already lost more than half of their underground water. But a new plan could save more of what’s left.