WATER TABLE DROPPING AROUND THE GLOBE

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LESTER BROWN, EARTH POLICY - The U.S. embassy in Beijing reports that
Chinese wheat farmers in some areas are now pumping from a depth of 300
meters, or nearly 1,000 feet. Pumping water from this far down raises
pumping costs so high that farmers are often forced to abandon
irrigation and return to less productive dryland farming. . . In a
survey of India's water situation, Fred Pearce reported in New Scientist
that the 21 million wells drilled are lowering water tables in most of
the country. In North Gujarat, the water table is falling by 6 meters
(20 feet) per year. In Tamil Nadu, a state with more than 62 million
people in southern India, wells are going dry almost everywhere and
falling water tables have dried up 95 percent of the wells owned by
small farmers, reducing the irrigated area in the state by half over the
last decade. . .

In the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that in
parts of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas-three leading grain-producing
states-the underground water table has dropped by more than 30 meters
(100 feet). As a result, wells have gone dry on thousands of farms in
the southern Great Plains. Although this mining of underground water is
taking a toll on U.S. grain production, irrigated land accounts for only
one fifth of the U.S. grain harvest, compared with close to three fifths
of the harvest in India and four fifths in China.

Pakistan, a country with 158 million people that is growing by 3 million
per year, is also mining its underground water. In the Pakistani part of
the fertile Punjab plain, the drop in water tables appears to be similar
to that in India. Observation wells near the twin cities of Islamabad
and Rawalpindi show a fall in the water table between 1982 and 2000 that
ranges from 1 to nearly 2 meters a year. . .

Iran, a country of 70 million people, is over-pumping its aquifers by an
average of 5 billion tons of water per year, the water equivalent of one
third of its annual grain harvest. . .

In Yemen, a nation of 21 million, the water table under most of the
country is falling by roughly 2 meters a year as water use outstrips the
sustainable yield of aquifers. . . In the search for water, the Yemeni
government has drilled test wells in the basin that are 1.2 miles
deep-depths normally associated with the oil industry-but they have
failed to find water. Yemen must soon decide whether to bring water to
Sana'a, possibly by pipeline from coastal desalting plants, if it can
afford it, or to relocate the capital. Either alternative will be costly
and potentially traumatic.

http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Seg/PB2ch03_ss2.htm

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