As Texas’s population booms and the state grows hotter and drier, it’s more important than ever to understand: Who’s wasting our water? The rains don’t come like they used to, and Glenn Schur can’t rely on the once bountiful water beneath the clay loam soil of the South Plains—the largest cotton-producing area in the world. In the past, his pumps pulled up as much as he needed to irrigate his crops. But recent years have brought drier weather to Schur’s 2,500 acres near Plainview, a town of 20,000 between Lubbock and Amarillo. The Ogallala Aquifer yields less and less. “My granddad dug the well. My dad pumped the well,” said the 65-year-old farmer. “And I’m going to be the generation that capped the well.”The Ogallala,…
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