May 13, 2015

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

Illinois has been hemorrhaging residents to sunny California and the Southwest for decades. But today California lacks the natural infrastructure to support its nearly 40 million residents, most of whom live on the desert.
A study by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration reports that California is probably in for a mega-drought that will last 30 or more years.
Will a reverse migration back to the water-rich Midwest unfold? Probably not right away, but it could in the decades to come, if we plan for it.
Just last year, 400,000 acres of California farmland were taken out of production, which represents in area more than twice my small Stark County, north of Peoria.
Always a big deal, water is becoming a really big deal now that it cannot be taken for granted.
And Illinois has a lot of water, an abundant supply until at least 2050, if it is well managed, according to Vern Knapp, the senior hydrologist at the Illinois State Water Survey at the University of Illinois.
The sources of our water in the state vary. Lake Michigan provides the lion’s share of the water used by the public in populous northeastern Illinois. Most of the rest of the water for central and northern Illinois comes from shallow underground aquifers.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.