Many playa lakes of the Southern Plains have been plowed under cropland, silted over, or diverted into irrigation pits. But the value of these shallow lakes for groundwater recharge and wildlife habitat has landowners and conservation groups working together to restore playa lakes for the Plains and the future of its economy and biodiversity.
Category: Restoration
Playas for the Plains
Photo by Texan by Nature
Leave Things as God Made Them
In early 2018, Dustin McNabb helped his mother-in-law fill a large, deep pit (600’ x 50’ x 20’) in an unfarmed playa on her dryland farm through the Texas Playa Conservation Initiative. The playa sits on the front half of 80 acres, next to a highway in Lubbock County. The family is letting the whole 80 acres go back to natural vegetation, and Dustin is managing it for upland birds.
“I’m the president of the local chapter of Quail Forever. That’s what got me started messing around out there. I’ve always been a hunter and have an affinity for quail and pheasant. So I’ve been working on restoring everything to a native habitat that’s more beneficial to those birds—and anything else that wants to roam around out there.
“Over the last few years, I’ve learned a lot about how important things are and in some cases you need to leave things the way God made ‘em—those playas being one of them. They are designed that way for a reason.
“The Texas Playa Conservation Initiative—how it’s designed, what it’s doing, the way that it’s run—is done very well and done with the best ideas at heart. It really is something I think everyone could benefit from if they would just consider allowing somebody on their property to do some work. It was a great program for us. The wildlife, vegetation, groundwater, and everything is going to benefit in the long run.”
Texas Playa Conservation Initiative
Beneath the feet of millions of Texans, below the waring grasslands of the panhandle, lie thousands of access points to the biggest aquifer in America. These shallow basins, called playas, are Texas’ recharge points for the Ogallala Aquifer, and they play a critical role in providing a plentiful amount of clean water for the entire region. However, the health and integrity of the playas, and ultimately the assurance of a steady water supply, is declining. Over-grazing, modifications from older irrigation practices, accumulation of silt deposits from erosion, and many other factors contribute to the declining quality of playas in the Texas panhandle. To counter this trend, the Texas Playa Conservation Initiative works with landowners and other stakeholders across the panhandle region to incentivize the restoration and rejuvenation of healthy playas.
Photo by Brian Slobe
Clovis Looks to Playas to Help Supply Municipal Water
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The city of Clovis, New Mexico, is taking an innovative approach to ensuring its future water supply — playa conservation. And what this city of 38,000 is doing might become a model for other municipalities on the High Plains. The city government put a million dollars of economic development funds toward playa conservation. Most immediately they’re doing a stormwater runoff project to fill playa lakes. Longer range, Clovis city officials are talking with adjacent landowners and ag producers about rehabbing those playas, and obtaining water rights.
“The farmer is converting to dryland farming, enhancing their playa lake recharge and getting a long-term agreement to save that water for municipal and industrial use.”
Clovis mayor David Lansford, who told me cattle feedlots came in decades ago. But more recently the region’s seen huge dairy farms established. It’s lucrative for local producers to grow forage for those milk cows.
“We can only wait so long to start implementing conservation methods outside the city where the water is being mined aggressively. Eighty-five or ninety percent of the water in Curry County is used to put on crops, and the rate that is going is unsustainable by a long shot.”
Lansford says in the county, there are 10 to 15 ag producers who understand their water supply will be critical for Clovis and the adjacent Cannon Air Force Base.
“They don’t want to be the ones that ran the well dry. They are community minded people. They understand and care about the survival and sustainability of Curry County’s economy.”
The challenge is finding a way to compensate those producers for going dryland.
“They’re going to participate as long as it makes business sense. They aren’t going to go along with $100, let’s say, when they can make $500. That doesn’t make any sense.”
One Clovis neighbor is rancher Vincent de Maio.
“The idea that we retire some water closer to the city is certainly the first step they want to take. I see it as a much bigger project, and I see it much more extensive. I see the Clovis area as really being the model going forward, because what’s happening here is happening in west Texas, is happening in Kansas and Nebraska, all the way across the Ogallala.”
Mayor Landsford understands playas recharge the aquifer the city pulls its water from, and Clovis has playas in town. One project Clovis is pursuing diverts storm runoff into those lakes “as opposed to running them down the bar ditches and onto the highway.”
Then find methods, engineering, land- and vegetation-management methods that return playas to their natural functioning form.
“And then divert that water into those playa lakes and create not only a recharge funnel for the aquifer, but create a habitat for wildlife and various living species.”
Ken Rainwater’s a water-resources engineer at Texas Tech. He’s involved with the consulting firm doing the Clovis drainage master plan.
“As the stormwater runs through the city of Clovis, the flow paths are controlled by where the playa lakes are. Part of my job is to work with the information they’ve gathered to try to get an idea about how the playas behave during and between storms.”
Mike Carter is Playa Lakes Joint Venture coordinator. This project to capture storm runoff and send it into playas, Mike says that’s new and innovative thinking.
“If you triple the amount of water going into a playa by diverting runoff that’s doing damage to roads anyway and then you do it with sediment buffers so that you don’t do damage to the playa, you could be looking at a situation where you’re tripling the amount of recharge. That’s exactly the kind of solution that we’re looking for. That’s brilliant thinking.”
Playa Country, which ended in late 2016, was a weekly show that featured conservation and wildlife experts — as well as farmers, ranchers and land managers — talking about conservation practices that improve wildlife habitat and landowners’ bottom-line. This episode of Playa Country was made possible by a grant from the Wildlife Conservation Society, with support provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Photo by Texan by Nature
Practice What You Preach
When Jan Minton, a former NRCS biologist, inherited her great-grandfather’s farm in Floyd County, she knew she was going to need some help. “It’s one thing when you work for NRCS and give private landowners alternatives. You have your Volkswagen version and your Cadillac version of practices to implement in order to reach objectives. It was a whole other pack of dogs when the place was mine, I made the decisions, and everything was at risk.”
According to Jan, the property had been ‘farmed to death’ by the time she took over its management. Over the years, two playas on the 854-acre property were altered to function as tailwater pits that captured and stored water that ran off irrigated fields, with a large trench cut through the largest playa. There was also accumulated sediment that needed to be excavated and removed. With help from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, she restored the playas by filling in the pit and ditch, removing silt, and planting a buffer.
“You guys are my heroes!” says Jan about the partners who helped make the playa restoration possible. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”