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National Geographic : 2002 Sep
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A fraction of one percent of Earth's water is available for To SEE WHAT unbridled water con sumption has wrought, both good and bad, you need go no farther than the Indian state of Gujarat. Like neighboring Rajasthan, Gujarat is a dry place that has experienced a surge of irrigated agri culture. In the northern part of the state, on a hot spring day, I came across a brick pump house amid flat green fields of wheat, mustard, cumin, and anise. Inside was the electrical system for a 62-horsepower motor that, ten hours a day, pumped a steady column of water from deep underground into a concrete tank through which the water was channeled to nearby fields. One of the pump's owners 70-year-old Nemchandbhai U. Patel-rested on a rope bed in the cool, dusky interior, lulled by the sound of water rushing up from under ground aquifers and gurgling into the tank. Patel stirred as I approached. He explained that the pump was used to irrigate his fields, as well as those of his partners and 50 other farm ers who purchase the water. Without it they would have to rely solely on rain, which in an area that receives about 25 inches of precipita tion a year-most of it in short summer cloud bursts-is a highly risky proposition. "Thanks to this well," said Patel, "we are able to sustain our lives." The electric pump that sent water streaming onto Patel's land is the machine that has pow ered India's green revolution. That agricultural achievement, which has enabled the country to grow enough food for its one billion people, was accomplished because of a huge increase in groundwater pumping. In the mid-fifties fewer than 100,000 motorized pumps were extracting groundwater for Indian agriculture. Today about 20 million are in operation, with the number growing by half a million each year. But the unregulated use of so much ground water has come at a high price: With farmers extracting water more quickly than nature can replenish it, aquifers have been depleted to the point that roughly half of India now faces overpumping problems, such as groundwater shortages or the influx of salt water into coastal wells. Many farmers have been forced to abandon wells or keep drilling deeper, rais ing costs and driving some out of business. In parts of Gujarat the water table has been dropping as much as 20 feet a year. Four decades ago the water table under Nemchand bhai Patel's fields was at 100 feet; now he must drill 500 feet before he hits water. He keeps deepening his well, but to drill a new one could be prohibitively expensive. "We think this water may one day be lost to us forever," said Mohanbhai G. Patel, 67, a nearby well owner whose last name is shared by many in the region. "The water we are now pumping from deep underground has been accumulating for thousands of years. It's like this urn here. If you keep drinking water and never refill it, at some point there will be no more. Unless the government brings in major schemes to recharge these aquifers, we will not survive." One reason farmers in India, and through out the world, have been heedlessly pumping water is that they have paid so little for it. In India the water itself is free, and the govern ment heavily subsidizes the electricity that drives the pumps. Rather than pay for the number of hours a pump runs, farmers pay a low, flat annual rate and pump with abandon. The overpumping of aquifers, whether for agricultural or municipal use, extends far beyond India. American farmers are withdraw ing water from the Ogallala aquifer, which underlies the Great Plains, at an unsustainable rate, with a third of the Texas portion already significantly depleted. The water table under the North China Plain, which produces about half of China's wheat and corn, is steadily dropping. Sandra Postel, a freshwater expert and director of the Massachusetts-based Global Water Policy Project, said that contin uing groundwater depletion could reduce China's and India's grain production by 10 to 20 percent in the coming decades. Two decades ago, as an idealistic young man intent on helping India's rural poor, Rajendra Singh traveled to northwestern Rajasthan, which was suffering water shortages from excessive groundwater extraction. Shortly after he arrived in the impoverished Alwar district, two things became clear to Singh. The first was that managing water wisely was the key to helping drought-prone villages in the region. The second was that farmers were pumping far too much groundwater. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, SEPTEMBER 2002
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