{"id":6340,"date":"2014-08-28T14:54:08","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T14:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=6340"},"modified":"2014-08-28T14:54:08","modified_gmt":"2014-08-28T14:54:08","slug":"water-level-on-the-rise-at-meredith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6340","title":{"rendered":"Water level on the rise at Meredith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

Steve Kersh, the chief meteorologist for ProNews 7 in Amarillo, sent out this interesting tweet this morning: “Despite resumed pumping of the lake, Meredith continues rising! Others, unfortunately dropping.”<\/p>\n

Who knew?<\/p>\n

Lake Meredith’s levels have been rising fairly steadily over the past several months.<\/p>\n

It had dropped to around 26 feet, down almost 75 percent from its historic high of 103 feet back in the early 1970s. It’s now at nearly 44 feet.<\/p>\n

The rise in the lake levels has prompted the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority to resume pumping water from the lake for the 11 communities served by the water-control agency. That includes Amarillo and Lubbock.<\/p>\n

The other lakes mentioned by Kersh are lakes Ute, Greenbelt and Mackenzie. Their levels are falling.<\/p>\n

OK, so what’s in store?<\/p>\n

CRMWA says it wants to protect the Ogallala Aquifer groundwater levels. Pumping surface water from Lake Meredith helps conserve aquifer supplies, says CRMWA.<\/p>\n

I get all that. Still, it’s a Catch-22 situation. Saving one water level and the expense of the other — and you can flip that strategy on its ear — still means we’re depleting water from one important source. It matters little which one gets drained first.<\/p>\n

Since I’m not the water expert, I am reluctant to second-guess those who know more about this subject than I do.<\/p>\n

It well might be that preserving the aquifer is in the better long-term interests of the region, given that when the Ogallala runs dry, then it’s dry for a very long time — as in forever.<\/p>\n

OK, folks. In the meantime, let’s keep praying for more rain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Kersh, the chief meteorologist for ProNews 7 in Amarillo, sent out this interesting tweet this morning: “Despite resumed pumping of the lake, Meredith continues rising! Others, unfortunately dropping.” Who knew? Lake Meredith’s levels have been rising fairly steadily over the past several months. It had dropped to around 26 feet, down almost 75 percent … Continue reading Water level on the rise at Meredith<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}