#1309 Water for a Dry Land with Char Miller

"Our technology that has unleashed such creativity has also unleashed the capacity for us to destroy the very things that we were creating."

— Char Miller

Clay and David speak with Char Miller, one of the three authors of the 3rd edition of Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land. Char Miller is Director of Environmental Analysis, and W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College.

Drop Jefferson into western Kansas or Oklahoma. What does he say about the Ogallala miracle? The Ogallala aquifer is a huge underground water resource which stretches from South Dakota all the way to Texas — an underground lake the size of Lake Huron that most people have never heard of. The aquifer is used to create one of the best agricultural productivity zones on Earth. It supplies water to people, industry and agriculture, and it's expected to run dry by the end of the century. The aquifer is now living on borrowed time because of its decline as a fossil resource. How would Jefferson have reacted to all of this?

Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land is coauthored by John Opie, Kenna Lang Archer, and Char Miller.