As aquifer levels decline in the Great Plains, states weigh the need to meter irrigation wells

About a quarter of the United States’s irrigated cropland sits on top of the Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains. But water levels are dropping, and states are taking different approaches to monitoring how much groundwater irrigators are pumping out.
Mike Shannon first learned about the Ogallala Aquifer because he made a costly mistake.

In the mid-1980s, Shannon was new to city government when one of his hometown’s wells started to go dry.

“I just assumed, maybe I ought to go somewhere else and stick another hole in the ground and we’ll get more water,” Shannon said. “Well, unfortunately, I stuck a hole in the ground and there was no water there.”