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Kansas: Planned and active ethanol plants in Ogallala Aquifer

Report overview | State maps: Colorado | Kansas | Nebraska | New Mexico | Oklahoma | Texas

Map 1. Water Table in Decline

Potential effect: Already scarce water supplies become scarcer

Four new plants with an expected 240 million gallons per year of ethanol production are planned for areas of high depletion. These plants could increase water pumping for corn-to-fuel processing by almost a billion gallons of water per year. If the new ethanol plants lead to any increase in local irrigated corn production, the plants would have an even larger impact on water pumping demands in one of the most overexploited sections of the Ogallala Aquifer, where a large region of the water table declined by over 40 feet between 1980 and 1996 (see Map 1).


Map 2. Conservation Reserve Program: Land Retired from Use

Potential effect: Loss of critical habitat

Western Kansas is home to some critical remnants of grassland habitat for a number of at-risk species, including the lesser prairie chicken and swift fox. Rising demand for corn may increase pressure to convert restored and native prairie tracts to crop production, threatening the habitat of these and other grassland wildlife (see Maps 2 and 3).

Map 3. Important Native Grasslands of the Central Shortgrass Prairie

Sources

CRP data:  Conservation Programs, Farm Service Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Ethanol plant location data:  Earth Policy Institute. 2006. Data files for distillery demand for grain to fuel cars vastly understated.

Native grasslands data:  Neely, B., et al. 2006. Central Shortgrass Prairie Ecoregional Assessment and Partnership Initiative. The Nature Conservancy of Colorado and the Shortgrass Prairie Partnership.

Ogallala depletion data:  Fischer, B. C., and V. L. McGuire. 1999. Digital data set of water-level changes in the High Plains aquifer in parts of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming, 1980 to 1996. Lincoln, NE: U.S. Geological Survey.