Aquifer | Hydrology and Supply

The southernmost portion of the Ogallala aquifer has been supplying water to the Panhandle and other parts of West Texas for more than half a century. The water is used extensively for irrigation – mostly for growing corn and cotton – as well as for livestock and municipal requirements. The Ogallala aquifer is the largest aquifer in North America, extending beneath 174,000 square miles across eight states with more than three billion acre-feet of water in available storage. The Panhandle portion of the Ogallala produces twice as much groundwater as all the other aquifers in the state combined.

Beneath the four-county area of Roberts, Hemphill, Lipscomb and Ochiltree, there are approximately 81 million acre-feet of available water, with annual recharge estimated at about 80,000 acre-feet. Only a very small percentage can be used for irrigation in the four-county area because of the topography of the land – mostly rolling hills, mesas and canyons. Of 2.5 million acres in these counties, only about 100,000 acres are under irrigation – just four percent. Within any reasonable planning horizon, the vast majority of this water can be described as “surplus” because it’s not needed in the Panhandle, either for agriculture or municipal use. It is also “stranded” because without production facilities and a delivery infrastructure to other parts of the state there is no market for it.

The high cost of transporting water prohibits its use for irrigation elsewhere in the Panhandle. Because this land is not suitable for agriculture, it is valued at only about $200 an acre. But when water rights are factored in, the land values more than doubles. Any increase of such magnitude is of tremendous economic benefit to the area’s ranchers and other landowners.

The only possible market for this water is municipal export to people in the state who need it most, consistent with Texas legislative policy.

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The hydrogeological structure of the Ogallala aquifer beneath the vicinity of production is in the form of saturated sand, clay and silt under water table conditions. Because of this, drawdown from the Mesa Water project will be limited essentially to the immediate area surrounding the well field. Because of the nature of the aquifer, as the project expands over time to include more of the four-county area, the project would still have no significant impact on counties to the west and south that use groundwater for irrigation.

Roberts County, the initial project area, is within the Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District, and as such is subject to significant regulation, including that 50 percent of the 1998 aquifer volume must remain in place in 2048. If Mesa were to begin exporting water in 2009 at a rate of 150,000 acre-feet per year, and if CRMWA continues at its current annual pumping rate of 40,000 acre-feet per year, and Amarillo begins pumping in 2040 and grows to 70,000 acre-feet per year over time, and all local four-county use continues, it will take 125 years to reach the 50-percent aquifer reduction point across this area. Looked at another way, in 2048 there will still be 26 million acre-feet of groundwater remaining in the four-county area in excess of the 50-percent level.

Simulated extent of 5-foot water level decline from projected pumpage of CRMWA, City of Amarillo and Mesa water project permit amounts.

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