Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains

Anthropologist Bessire (Behold the Black Caiman) combines ethnography and memoir in this deeply personal look at the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer, which lies partially in his “ancestral homelands in southwest Kansas.” Many of the farmers and ranchers Bessire speaks with are acutely aware of the dropping water levels in their local wells, but have not changed their unsustainable farming practices, assuming that authorities would step in before it was too late. However, Bessire writes, some of the officials tasked with overseeing the aquifer have stakes in agribusiness and prioritize their own short-term profit over the long-term stability of the aquifer. Bessire links the destruction of the High Plains aquifer system, the historical slaughter of the region’s buffalo herds, and genocidal campaigns against Indigenous tribes to a depletionist mindset, in which “dignity and rights artificially appear as if they were zero-sum games.” Along the way, troubling details emerge about Bessire’s great-grandfather RW, who pioneered groundwater-draining irrigation practices and set a legacy of toxic masculinity that affected Bessire, his father, and his grandmother Fern, a leader of the county historical society, whose notes and research on the history of the region form the beating heart of the book. This is a devastating portrait of how shortsighted decisions lead to devastating losses. (May)