After six days touring the great American West, it was off for Arkansas the grueling heat and humidity. We went back across Kansas so we could stop for the night at Mom and Dad’s farm in far eastern Kansas. We stopped just outside of Dodge City to get a look at the Arkansas River, or what used to be the Arkansas River. By the time the river leaves Colorado and enters Kansas it’s bone dry, as you can see in the photo. Compare it to the photos in this previous post. All the water is sucked out for irrigation purposes. I find it fascinating that we can allow one of the great American rivers to exist in this condition. The river runs about a half-mile from our house in Little Rock where it’s nearly a half-mile wide.
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The river is dry not because of irrigation, but because of a dam upriver in Colorado. The outflow from that dam has been well below the agreed-upon amounts for decades. The river still runs just a few feet below the surface. All irrigation water is drawn from the aquifer, which is a few hundered feet below a layer of limestone (which seperates the river from the aquifer).