Water’s Worth: It Sits Beneath Nebraska’s Farmland and Has Serious Value. But Who Owns It?

Percentage change in the water-containing thickness of the Ogallala Aquifer, from predevelopment (about 1950) to 2017. Aquifer depths have fallen precipitously in large swaths in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas in the past seven decades. They have also dropped in southwest Nebraska. Map excerpted from the 2017 High Plains Water-Level Monitoring Study, U.S. Geological Survey

Center pivot irrigation northeast of Adams, Nebraska. Photo courtesy of University of Nebraska-Lincoln