Hiding in Plain Sight: Talking Aquifer Depletion with Lucas Bessire

An interview with Lucas Bessire, past Member (2012–13) in the School of Social Science:

"The Ogallala aquifer, one of the earth’s largest, extends from South Dakota to Texas and, today, supports one-sixth of the world’s grain production, even as it is quickly being drained to the point of collapse. Lucas Bessire’s Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains, which was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award, is a story about the politics and livelihoods that have sustained this extraction. It is also, necessarily, a personal story. The author’s family has lived in Kansas for generations, and their livelihoods depended upon the aquifer. Running Out is a hybrid memoir-analysis that grapples with what, if anything, might redirect the path carved by groundwater depletion while noticing and honoring the lives built around and against it."