OGALLALA OASES - WATER-USE, POPULATION REDISTRIBUTION, AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS IN THE HIGH-PLAINS OF WESTERN KANSAS, 1980-1990

Contrary to recent literature that portrays the High Plains as an over-exploited region of economic and demographic decline and as place that should be deprivatized, abandoned, and restored to a buffalo commons, this study suggests that the irrigated Ogallala region is not dying. It is experiencing, instead, a major redistribution of population into nucleated Ogallala oases sustained by the presence of ample groundwater for irrigation. Although more remote rural areas with irrigated agriculture are losing population, they endure nonetheless as important components of the cultural landscape in their role as hinterlands for the Ogallala oases. This paper examines the relationship between proximity to groundwater use and population change in the Ogallala aquifer region of Kansas during the 1980s. The analysis focuses on three levels; the county, incorporated and census designated places, and rural census county subdivisions. The association between proximity to groundwater and population change is statistically significant among counties, among places larger than 500 inhabitants, and among more densely-populated rural areas. Groundwater use is not associated, however, with population change in places with fewer than 500 people or in sparsely-populated rural census county subdivisions. These patterns of population change are not merely reflections of historical inertia. They are better explained by active responses to the advantages of agglomeration and access to ground-water than to the passive unfolding of past patterns of population redistribution. In this context, a triage-type development policy that favors Ogallala oases larger than 500 inhabitants seems a more appropriate response to regional problems than the alternatives of growth poles, service sharing strategies, outright abandonment, or laissez-faire.