Texas High Plains farmers and ranchers are wrong on Proposition 4

I'm talking about people like Suzanne Bellsnyder.

I've previously discussed how it's an economic boondoggle and antienvironmental. Now, we're pivoting directly to Texas' High Plains and Panhandle, places like Sherman and Hansford counties where Ms. Bellsnyder is.

The biggie of the 17 constitutional amendments on the Nov. 4 ballot is Proposition 4. Vote NO, NO, and NO. Any librul or alleged leftist organization telling you to vote yes is full of it. I covered this a month ago, and specifically called out Lone Star "Left" for saying vote yes. It's a boondoggle fiscally AND, even worse, for anybody truly to the left? It's horribly antienvironmental. Since then, I noted something worse: The state doesn't even know how much water these "data centers" will use, and it has basically no regulations to that end.

Lone Star "Left," per Cactus Ed Abbey, seems to believe in growth for growth's sake without admitting that's the theology of the cancer cell.

Now note to likes of Suzanne Bellsnyder: Agricultural wells are declining because of over-appropriation and climate change on the high plains, like your Texas Panhandle. Marc Reisner wrote about the former 40 years ago in "Cadillac Desert." I saw that in action 25-plus years ago in eastern New Mexico, as far as the Ogallala Aquifer.

See this piece for details:

Much of this water used for farming is actually wasted; flood or furrow irrigation, the most widely used irrigation technique involving running water through small trenches in crop fields [9], loses about 50% of its water to evaporation and runoff [8]. According to the USGS, 23,000 acres of cropland were irrigated with flood techniques in 2015, using about 43.3 billion gallons of water per day — and wasting half of that [9]. 

Despite its known wastefulness, western farming still relies heavily on flooding irrigation because of its low cost. Government subsidies encourage farmers to purchase more land to produce more crops, requiring larger irrigation equipment — all of which costs money. To try to break even, farmers are forced to turn to fast and reliable irrigation techniques. This cycle is running the aquifer dry.

In fact, the Okie state Extension service says that, because of people like you, Ms. Bellsnyder, parts of the Ogallala could run dry in 30 years. 

In other words, rewarding bad behavior is what Prop 4 is all about, in addition to being anti-environmental etc. 

Per that piece, especially at the federal level but also the state level, there's all sorts of policies we could undertake to preserve the Ogallala. Like this, from that piece above:

Economically, farmers can use lowering groundwater levels as a tax write off on equipment. Replacing tax write offs with tax credits for conserving groundwater could be a compelling incentive to monitor and save more water

There you go.

Meanwhile, yes, people in Ms Bellsnyder's counties, second from left and middle at the top row of the Texas Panhandle, are indeed drawing down water. In some cases, 50-100 feet as of 2001, per the image. Think of how much more it's dropped today.

It's not all farmers. Reportedly, Nebraska is somewhat better, Colorado modestly better, and Tex-ass and Kansas the worst. And, there's the issue of drought likely to continue in the Southwest for the rest of this century due to climate change. (I browsed pieces on Bellsnyder's Substack, and didn't find that phrase, "climate change.") That's the facts. Per this piece, the Ogallala is likely to go pretty much full-on belly-up in 20 years. Part of it is lack of cooperation between states. Part of it is Tex-ass having purely voluntary laws for water conservation.

Until that's fixed, that's another reason to vote NO on Prop. 4. 

Charles Perry, bring the public some water conservation issues with teeth in them, before anything else. 

Sadly, per Ballotpedia, all Democraps in both House and Senate supported it. (Twelve House Rethuglicans were opposed.) Also, sadly, no non-Gang Green environmental org, like Center for Biological Diversity, registered official opposition, whether or not speaking to that end. 

And, a follow-up note to Bellsnyder in general. No, contra your unwarranted assumptions (which you as a newspaper publisher, and a former Texas Lege staffer, should know better than to make) not everybody in rural Tex-ass is Rethuglican. Nor are they all "people of faith." Gack. And barf.