O N H E N R Y ' S F A R M — W H Y W E R A R E L Y I R R I G A T E
Henry has written a series of essays, and one long one is about irrigation. Here's one excerpt from it, and below is another.
I very rarely irrigate my fields, but when I do (usually to get fall crops to germinate in the heat and drought of August) I irrigate from our deep well. The problem here is whether this water is a sustainable, renewable resource or not.
The water that we pump from 230 feet below the surface sits in the gaps between gravel, sand, and silt outwash deposited there by the series of glaciers that crept down from Canada at the tail end of the Pleistocene Epoch. As far as I can tell there are two theories about this water.
One theory is that the water dates back to the Ice Age. That water we are pulling up now was trapped down there by glaciers that came through here and first filled in an ancient valley with sand and gravel and then smeared that over with layer after layer of clay. I saw those clay layers when Ebert drilled the well at our trailer. For each foot he dug down, he would take out a sample and lay it on the ground in sequence, so you could see the shift in clay types as the color shifted through hues of red, yellow, orange, blue and green going down, down, down for 230 feet. Since the last Ice Age, that pristine water dwelled there in peaceful silence — untouched and unmolested until we humans started digging and then drilling wells.
According to this theory, well water is a non-renewable resource. In addition to burning non-renewable fossil fuels, we are drinking non-renewable fossil water that was trapped beneath the earth 15,000 to 150,000 years ago, depending on which glacial episode covered it over. Once we empty out the aquifer our well water comes from, that’s it. We’re done. Meaning any use of this water is unsustainable over a long enough time span.
The other theory is that our aquifer is slowly recharged by groundwater. Somehow groundwater makes its way down through those 200 feet of clay to reach the porous gravel and sand below. Or, because these underground aquifers don’t necessarily sit at the same depths throughout the landscape, they could rise up much closer to the surface in places or even intersect somewhere with the ground surface. That’s what a spring is.
The water underneath us could be entering the aquifer miles and miles away and flowing along an underground gradient until it reaches us. However the water gets there, according to this theory, the aquifer is continually fed by surface water slowly seeping back into it. It may take 100s or 1000s of years to get down there, but eventually it does.
And we can be fairly certain that it takes more than 50 years for surface water to get down there, though, because our well and wells around us are not contaminated by nitrates from modern synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. If surface water reached the aquifer any faster than that, we would be getting nitrate contamination readings by now. The one thing we know for sure about nitrates is that they are incredibly water-soluble, which means that wherever water goes, nitrates go with it. We in this area are lucky: 12% of private wells in Illinois have nitrate levels above the EPA’s safety level. The city of Bloomington, 20 miles to the southeast, violated the EPA nitrate standard 8 out of 10 years between 1986 and 1995.
So if this theory is correct, our aquifer is slowly getting recharged, so the water is a renewable resource. Whether it is a sustainable resource or not depends on whether or not we pump water out faster than water comes back in.
The amazing thing is that nobody knows how much water is down there and whether it recharges or not. If it does recharge, nobody knows how fast it recharges. The way they test water capacity wells for towns around here is they pump water out of the city well at the maximum rate for 24 hours and then measure how far the water fell over the 24-hour period. I saw test results for Congerville. The water level dropped by three feet. The verdict? There’s plenty of water down there. No problem. The basis for that verdict? I have no idea, and I don’t think anybody does.
They just say, “Seems like there is a whole hell of a lot of water down there, so no worries.”
I think, yes, there is a whole hell of a lot of water down there. But whose water is it? And do we have the right to use as much of it as we want willy-nilly?
The legal answer is the water belongs to whoever pumps it out. And yes, it is perfectly legal for every person, every farm, every municipality, every corporation to use as much of it as they damn well please.
To me, whether our water comes from a reservoir of fossilized Ice Age water or from a slowly recharging aquifer, it is a precious resource and one that we need to conserve as much as possible. So, while we use it to drink and cook and bathe, and to wash clothes, dishes and produce, it is really hard for me to bring up that water to spread on my 10 acres of vegetables. When you start figuring out how many gallons of water it takes to water a field, you really start to appreciate the miracle of rain. To water my 10-acre field with an inch of water takes 270,000 gallons of water. If I were to water my entire 10 acres just five times in a season, I’d pump out 1.35 million gallons in a year.
Now that sounds like a lot of water—it is a lot of water—but livestock farmers use huge amounts of water, too, especially the modern confinement operations. My neighbors with confinement hog operations use more water than I would even if I irrigated my 10 acres regularly — by a factor of 100, in fact. A 1,500 sow operation—which is a small to mid-sized operation in this day and age—uses over 100 million gallons of water a year for watering the animals and flushing out manure.
Whether we are talking a million gallons or 100 million gallons, I can’t imagine that either is sustainable. But who knows? We as a society and a race are somehow so hyper-vigilant about some things (worms in our sweetcorn, Islamic terrorists in our midst) and yet when it comes to things like greenhouse gases, radioactive waste, and countless other environmental issues, we take a completely relaxed attitude. We don’t know how much water we have, but, hey, relax, the water only dropped three feet in 24 hours.
How many hours did it take to come back up those three feet?
Nobody thought to measure that.
| Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.  |
| Henry laying drip tape on top of seeds to get them to germinate. |
I very rarely irrigate my fields, but when I do (usually to get fall crops to germinate in the heat and drought of August) I irrigate from our deep well. The problem here is whether this water is a sustainable, renewable resource or not.
The water that we pump from 230 feet below the surface sits in the gaps between gravel, sand, and silt outwash deposited there by the series of glaciers that crept down from Canada at the tail end of the Pleistocene Epoch. As far as I can tell there are two theories about this water.
One theory is that the water dates back to the Ice Age. That water we are pulling up now was trapped down there by glaciers that came through here and first filled in an ancient valley with sand and gravel and then smeared that over with layer after layer of clay. I saw those clay layers when Ebert drilled the well at our trailer. For each foot he dug down, he would take out a sample and lay it on the ground in sequence, so you could see the shift in clay types as the color shifted through hues of red, yellow, orange, blue and green going down, down, down for 230 feet. Since the last Ice Age, that pristine water dwelled there in peaceful silence — untouched and unmolested until we humans started digging and then drilling wells.
According to this theory, well water is a non-renewable resource. In addition to burning non-renewable fossil fuels, we are drinking non-renewable fossil water that was trapped beneath the earth 15,000 to 150,000 years ago, depending on which glacial episode covered it over. Once we empty out the aquifer our well water comes from, that’s it. We’re done. Meaning any use of this water is unsustainable over a long enough time span.
The other theory is that our aquifer is slowly recharged by groundwater. Somehow groundwater makes its way down through those 200 feet of clay to reach the porous gravel and sand below. Or, because these underground aquifers don’t necessarily sit at the same depths throughout the landscape, they could rise up much closer to the surface in places or even intersect somewhere with the ground surface. That’s what a spring is.
The water underneath us could be entering the aquifer miles and miles away and flowing along an underground gradient until it reaches us. However the water gets there, according to this theory, the aquifer is continually fed by surface water slowly seeping back into it. It may take 100s or 1000s of years to get down there, but eventually it does.
And we can be fairly certain that it takes more than 50 years for surface water to get down there, though, because our well and wells around us are not contaminated by nitrates from modern synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. If surface water reached the aquifer any faster than that, we would be getting nitrate contamination readings by now. The one thing we know for sure about nitrates is that they are incredibly water-soluble, which means that wherever water goes, nitrates go with it. We in this area are lucky: 12% of private wells in Illinois have nitrate levels above the EPA’s safety level. The city of Bloomington, 20 miles to the southeast, violated the EPA nitrate standard 8 out of 10 years between 1986 and 1995.
So if this theory is correct, our aquifer is slowly getting recharged, so the water is a renewable resource. Whether it is a sustainable resource or not depends on whether or not we pump water out faster than water comes back in.
The amazing thing is that nobody knows how much water is down there and whether it recharges or not. If it does recharge, nobody knows how fast it recharges. The way they test water capacity wells for towns around here is they pump water out of the city well at the maximum rate for 24 hours and then measure how far the water fell over the 24-hour period. I saw test results for Congerville. The water level dropped by three feet. The verdict? There’s plenty of water down there. No problem. The basis for that verdict? I have no idea, and I don’t think anybody does.
They just say, “Seems like there is a whole hell of a lot of water down there, so no worries.”
I think, yes, there is a whole hell of a lot of water down there. But whose water is it? And do we have the right to use as much of it as we want willy-nilly?
The legal answer is the water belongs to whoever pumps it out. And yes, it is perfectly legal for every person, every farm, every municipality, every corporation to use as much of it as they damn well please.
To me, whether our water comes from a reservoir of fossilized Ice Age water or from a slowly recharging aquifer, it is a precious resource and one that we need to conserve as much as possible. So, while we use it to drink and cook and bathe, and to wash clothes, dishes and produce, it is really hard for me to bring up that water to spread on my 10 acres of vegetables. When you start figuring out how many gallons of water it takes to water a field, you really start to appreciate the miracle of rain. To water my 10-acre field with an inch of water takes 270,000 gallons of water. If I were to water my entire 10 acres just five times in a season, I’d pump out 1.35 million gallons in a year.
Now that sounds like a lot of water—it is a lot of water—but livestock farmers use huge amounts of water, too, especially the modern confinement operations. My neighbors with confinement hog operations use more water than I would even if I irrigated my 10 acres regularly — by a factor of 100, in fact. A 1,500 sow operation—which is a small to mid-sized operation in this day and age—uses over 100 million gallons of water a year for watering the animals and flushing out manure.
Whether we are talking a million gallons or 100 million gallons, I can’t imagine that either is sustainable. But who knows? We as a society and a race are somehow so hyper-vigilant about some things (worms in our sweetcorn, Islamic terrorists in our midst) and yet when it comes to things like greenhouse gases, radioactive waste, and countless other environmental issues, we take a completely relaxed attitude. We don’t know how much water we have, but, hey, relax, the water only dropped three feet in 24 hours.
How many hours did it take to come back up those three feet?
Nobody thought to measure that.