By Dr. Robert Thorson
I have a new argument for federal aid to Eastern cities. It comes not from the human instincts for fairness, charity and power, but from earth science.
The eastern United States is water-rich and land-poor, whereas the West is water-poor and land-rich. For years, federal dollars have been flowing west-by-southwest to help even the score, to reverse what nature has wrought, to finance extravagant irrigation projects that allow Sun Belt cities to thrive in otherwise parched landscapes … all with dollars lifted from Eastern wallets. It was a dumb idea then. It’s a worse idea now, because climate changes are making the Southern high plains drier, and Northeastern cities wetter.
I was mulling this over last week when a newspaper article grabbed my attention. Apparently, small towns in Kansas are giving away land to anyone who will move to the Sunflower State, a place where the land resembles a green ocean each spring and the world’s biggest planetarium each winter.
My first thought went to that early scene from “The Wizard of Oz” in which Dorothy and Toto hear Professor Marvel making empty promises from the back of his circus wagon; promises just as empty as those he made later as the wizard pretender behind the curtain. Putting down the paper, I imagined him calling out: “Step right up! Get your free land! More than an acre in every lot!” Then I hear his voice fade as the dust and the wind rise up and blow these small towns away.
Actually, this is the third time Kansas has given away land. The first offer took place when the Homestead Act of 1862 handed out free farms to induce settlement in abandoned Indian territory. The second time came after the Dust Bowl decades of the 1920s and 1930s. This third effort to reverse what geography has wrought — to repopulate small Kansas towns — is funded by an educational subsidy on top of the pre-existing irrigation subsidy. Each new child enrolled to a local public school brings in thousands of dollars in state and federal aid. In this Kansas version of the No Child Left Behind Act, apparently no school should be left behind, even those on the threshold of extinction.
The water that has kept many Kansas farms going since the Dust Bowl era is “fossil” water pumped from a deep sandstone aquifer named for the Oglala tribe. The last time this aquifer was fully recharged was 15,000 to 30,000 years ago, when there was a surplus of ice-age rain and snowmelt. But now that the climate is fairly dry, the ancient water is being used more like petroleum taken from a vast water field. Each day, the water table drops a little lower, making each barrel a little more expensive to obtain, making a larger subsidy required. With adjacent sources of water pre-empted by desert cities, dude ranches, Native American reservations and short-shrifted countries like Mexico, there is simply not enough water to keep Kansas artificially green. More ominously, our best climate models predict with confidence that places like Kansas will become even warmer and drier in our greenhouse gas future.
Having once lived and farmed on the open plains, I am sorely tempted to take the bait of free land and move to America’s outback. But as a scientist and taxpayer, I know that both the water and the irrigation subsidies will eventually dry up, both victims of irreversible climate and political changes already underway.
Still, I like the idea of land subsidies to even out the population. So, here’s my recommendation: Give away land, not in the semi-arid high plains, but in the empty, rusted-out slums of otherwise densely populated Northeastern metropolitan areas, places where climate change is likely to bring more, rather than less, water, rinsing away the grime and keeping public fountains flowing.
In this imagined scenario, I see a parade of new residents — from nearby suburbs — bringing with them both hope and good schools to what are now undervalued places. Places where the landscape and water resources are otherwise nearly perfect.