The well pumps 800 gallons per minute when it's running full. Used to be 1,200 before the water table dropped another twenty feet. He knows exactly how much longer it'll last at current pumping rates. Maybe fifteen years. Maybe ten if the aquifer keeps dropping like it did in Wallace County—seven feet in twelve months.
He's 62. His kids aren't coming back to farm. One's a nurse in Wichita, the other works IT in Denver. They grew up knowing this life was hard and getting harder. He doesn't blame them for leaving.
His math: He's got maybe ten good years before his body gives out. The wells have maybe fifteen before they're too expensive to pump. His equipment is financed. His land is his retirement—the only asset besides Social Security. And irrigated cropland in Kansas is worth 10.4 percent more than last year, while dryland only went up 3.8 percent.
Every year he doesn't irrigate is a year his land loses value. Every bushel he doesn't grow is income he can't get back.
The state keeps talking about conservation. About voluntary reductions. About local management areas where farmers agree to use less water. He's been to the meetings. He's heard the pitch.
They don't mention that dryland farming saves money on irrigation, but other production costs stay the same while yields drop by half or more. You're spending almost as much to grow a lot less. That works if you're young with paid-off equipment and kids who'll farm this ground in 2045. It doesn't work if you're trying to retire in 2030 and your land value is your pension.
He remembers the meeting where they pitched the conservation program. Watched younger farmers with succession plans sign up, talking about buying time for the next generation. He sat in the back doing different math. His neighbor farms 3,000 acres—at that scale you can absorb a 20 percent reduction and make it up in efficiency. He farms 800. Every acre-inch matters. He doesn't have margin to experiment and hope it works out.
The thing that makes him angry enough to speak up at public meetings even though it won't change anything: the state created this mess. Kansas issued more water rights than the aquifer could sustain. They knew it, or should have known it, back in the 1970s when everyone was drilling wells and the state was handing out permits. Now the water's running out and they want farmers to fix it voluntarily.
They're asking him to pay for the state's mistake with his retirement.
If they want conservation, they should buy back water rights at fair market value. They should compensate farmers who reduce pumping. They should enforce limits on everyone, not ask for volunteers. But they won't do that because it costs money and requires political courage, so instead they run programs where farmers can feel good about using less water while the aquifer keeps dropping and the guys who don't participate keep maximizing yield.
He's not against saving water. He's against being the only one who sacrifices while his neighbors pump freely. Against reducing production to extend the aquifer's life for people who won't be farming here anyway. Against taking a financial hit to solve a problem the state refuses to fix through actual regulation.
His wells will last as long as they last. When they're done, he'll sell to whoever's buying land in western Kansas by then. Probably corporate operations with enough capital to drill deeper or switch to dryland at scale. He'll take whatever the market offers and hope it's enough.
He's being honest about his constraints. When you're his age, with his debt load, with land as your only asset, conservation is a luxury you can't afford. The water's going to run out whether he uses it or not. At least this way he gets something out of it before it's gone.
The folks in Sheridan County bought themselves time. Aquifer decline went from two feet per year to half a foot. That's real.
But time for what? Time for technology to solve this? Time for the next generation to figure it out? Time for the state to finally regulate what it should have regulated fifty years ago?
He doesn't have time. He's got wells that are dropping and equipment payments and a retirement that depends on selling this land for something close to what irrigated ground is worth.
The well keeps pumping. 800 gallons per minute, pulling water from 200 feet down, dropping the water table another fraction with every hour it runs. The state says voluntary conservation is working in some counties. The aquifer says it's still going down everywhere, just slower in some places than others.
He knows what happens when the wells run dry. He's seen it in other parts of Kansas, other parts of the High Plains. The land goes back to dryland or gets sold off to whoever can afford to operate at that scale. The small operations disappear. The towns shrink. The schools close.
That's coming whether he conserves or not. The state issued too many water rights, the aquifer can't recharge fast enough, and voluntary programs can't fix structural problems.
He's just trying to get out before the collapse.
The center pivot makes its slow rotation across the cornfield, pulling water from an aquifer that won't outlast him by much. Long enough to retire with something to show for forty years of work. Someone else's problem after that.