Why We Should Be Concerned About a Great Plains Aquifer; Oodles of Conspiracy Nonsense Surrounding California Elections–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: June 11, 2026

Indy Digest: June 11, 2026

Rather than discussing the idiotic and unfounded conspiracy crap surrounding California’s elections (we have more on that below), I’m going to use this space to shine a light a news story you may have missed, regarding a topic that should be important to us all: an aquifer in the middle of the U.S.

Yes, the Ogallala Aquifer is important to all of us. Newsweek explains why:

The largest underground water supply in the United States—responsible for sustaining a vast share of the nation’s farming—is steadily running dry, raising concerns about future food production and price volatility as supplies come under strain.

The Ogallala Aquifer, which lies beneath eight Great Plains states from South Dakota to Texas, provides roughly 30 percent of the groundwater used for irrigation in the U.S. and supports around a fifth of the country’s agricultural output.

But water levels have been falling for decades, raising fresh concerns about how long one of the world’s most important food-producing regions can continue to rely on it.

In some areas, groundwater levels have dropped by more than 200 feet since large-scale irrigation began, according to U.S. Geological Survey data—one of the clearest signs of long-term depletion. Satellite analyses have also shown widespread declines across the aquifer, with maps revealing concentrated losses in heavily irrigated parts of Texas and Kansas.

Yikes.

What’s causing this depletion? Part of it has to do with the area’s geology; part of it has to do, as you may have guessed, with climate change. The Newsweek piece says:

The Ogallala is often described as a “fossil” water source—formed thousands to millions of years ago—with a natural recharge rate of less than an inch per year in many areas.

That imbalance has driven long-term declines. U.S. Geological Survey data shows water levels in parts of the High Plains aquifer have dropped by more than 200 feet in some locations since large-scale irrigation began in the mid-20th century.

Climate pressures are expected to worsen the trend. The National Climate Assessment previously warned that drought and rising temperatures will likely increase water demand while reducing supply, intensifying stress on the aquifer.

The new NASA analysis underscores how human activity—not just climate—has reshaped the aquifer, with irrigation driving major changes to groundwater storage across the region.

So, how does the Ogallala situation compare to the aquifer we depend on here in the Coachella Valley? Fortunately, we’re in a lot better shape than they are in the Great Plains.

We covered the local situation four years ago, when the state was in a serious drought. Kevin Fitzgerald wrote in our 2022 piece:

(Fortunately), we still have The Aquifer.

The majority of the rest of California is not as fortunate. For example, cities in Northern California, such as San Francisco and Sacramento, rely heavily on precipitation and mountain runoff—and they are facing serious challenges in the warmer summer months ahead.

“We are extraordinarily lucky for two reasons,” (then-Desert Water Agency director of public affairs and water planning) Ashley Metzger told the Independent in an interview. “One is that we sit on top of this aquifer that can act as a huge drought buffer, and it affords us the ability to manage water in the long term and not have to panic if significant droughts or dry events do occur. Secondly, because of decades of really wise water management by my predecessors and the folks before them, thought was given to bringing water in from other places to replenish our aquifer—so we have something really special, and we’re working really hard to protect it.”

So we’re in OK shape here—but given how massive and important the Ogallala Aquifer is to this country, its status is worth noting.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• As for the aforementioned idiotic and unfounded conspiracy crap surrounding California’s elections … Daniel Dale, CNN’s fact-checker, finds similarities between Trump’s Obama birth-certificate nonsense and his California election nonsense: “If you’re pushing the baseless conspiracy theory that the results of last week’s California primary elections were rigged against Republicans like gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, it would seem highly inconvenient that Hilton has succeeded in qualifying for the November runoffs. But if you’re a seasoned conspiracy theorist, as President Donald Trump is, you don’t just stop telling a fantastical tale when it is contradicted by new facts. Rather, you simply adjust the conspiracy theory so that the new facts now fit within it. Trump has years of experience with this kind of dishonest narrative flexibility. It’s what he employed, for example, after former President Barack Obama released his long-form Hawaii birth certificate in 2011, conclusively disproving Trump’s conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t actually born in the US. Rather than immediately abandon his nonsense, Trump soon began suggesting the birth certificate was a phony. This time, rather than conceding that it’s obviously time to abandon his ‘rigged election’ declarations about California, Trump has begun claiming that he had jawboned the riggers into submission … but only in Hilton’s case, not the case of unsuccessful Republican Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt.”

• Meanwhile, a right-wing California assemblymember-turned-U.S. attorney says he’s investigating the state election. The Hill says: “Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, on Monday said it is likely ‘people will be charged’ over alleged voter fraud in California. ‘I expect people will be charged. But we need a wide-scale audit of the California voter roll, which is what Harmeet and I have been trying to do for the last year,’ Essayli said, referring to Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon, during an appearance on ‘The Glenn Beck Program.’ Republican lawmakers have cast doubt on the L.A. mayoral race as GOP candidate Spencer Pratt did not advance to a runoff despite being in second place when the polls closed on June 2. … (Last week), Essayli announced his office had ‘multiple election fraud investigations underway’ but did not offer any specifics.”

• A new poll shows, to absolutely nobody’s surprise, that the Democrat has a big lead on the Republican in the California governor’s contest. The Los Angeles Times reports. “Democrat Xavier Becerra holds a major advantage over Republican Steve Hilton as the race for California governor heads toward the November election, a new poll shows. … Among registered voters in the state, 52% supported Becerra in a head-to-head matchup against Hilton, who was backed by 31%, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll which was co-sponsored by The Los Angeles Times. The remainder were undecided. ‘It looks very much like a traditional, partisan-based general election, with most of the Democrats, over 80%, behind Becerra as the campaign starts,’ said IGS Poll Director Mark DiCamillo. ‘Even though Hilton has over 80% of the Republicans, the Democrats outnumber Republicans by 20 points in the state, and that gives the Democratic candidates a huge advantage, which Becerra is clearly taking advantage of in this election.’ The survey of California voters was conducted before the primary, from May 19-24.”

• The white-supremacist elements of the Trump administration could not be any more obvious. (OK, they could, but they’re ALREADY VERY OBVIOUS.) NPR reports: “Former Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino was the face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. In late May, he appeared alongside neo-Nazis and white nationalists at the Remigration Summit in Porto, Portugal. At the conference, he endorsed the organizers’ immigration agenda, which some researchers have compared to ethnic cleansing. One of the organizers of the Remigration Summit was Martin Sellner, an Austrian white nationalist and former neo-Nazi widely credited with popularizing the term ‘remigration.’ Sellner calls for expelling most people of color from Europe, including permanent residents and citizens. In his speech, Bovino thanked Sellner for inviting him and addressed him directly. ‘Your ideas, we talked a lot on that. And again, those ideas mirror each other. It’s almost—it’s very suspicious how we’ve never talked before—face to face, that is—until yesterday, and we were on the same sheet of music almost immediately,’ Bovino said.”

• More unsurprising news comes via this Wired story: “Meta Changed Its Speech Rules. Then Threats Against Politicians Skyrocketed.” The lede: “Last year, Meta radically overhauled the rules around what content it would allow on its platforms. The company claimed that its own efforts policing speech had gone too far and that it would relax the rules around what speech was allowed. ‘We have been over-enforcing our rules, limiting legitimate political debate and censoring too much trivial content and subjecting too many people to frustrating enforcement actions,’ Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, wrote in a blog post at the time. Over a year later, new research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) shows the immediate impact of these changes. The researchers analyzed about 8 million Facebook comments and found that abusive and racist comments targeting both Republican and Democrat lawmakers tripled in the six months after the new rules were put in place. Some categories of abusive comments documented by the researchers saw even sharper rises, with violent threats and hate speech quadrupling during the same period.”

• And finally … today’s recall news involves … pool toys … because of an “impalement hazard”! Eek! USA Today reports: “Joyce US Corp recalled 254,000 Sloosh Dive Sticks on June 11 because they exceeded the compress limit, posing an impalement hazard, according to a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recall report. In shallow water, children could fall on the sticks, resulting in ‘serious piercing injuries,’ the report reads. As of June 11, Joyce was not familiar with any injuries related to the recall. … The recall affects Sloosh diving sticks, included in a 30-pack of pool toys. The model number for the pack is 40041, printed on the back of the box, next to the barcode. The model number is also printed on each dive stick. … The recalled dive sticks were sold on Amazon, Temu, Shein, Walmart.com and Target.com, according to the recall report.”

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