There was no such solution for the Ogallala aquifer, as water levels dropped in deep wells, pumping lifts and costs rose until farming was no longer profitable. <Cut to picture of modern white ship-lapped farmhouse being inundated by a hundred-foot-tall sand dune. The peak of a red barn barely shows through the sand that has covered it.> Unfortunately, the drought brought back the sand dunes that had historically formed the basic terrain of the region. When America was first settled, the fields of Kansas where part of the Great American Desert. <Cut to sepia-toned still photo from the an early American photographer of the Kansas during the eighteen hundreds; sand dunes are visible in the distance.> Although the aquifer wasnít totally depleted, the encroaching dunes made corn agriculture impractical. Even dryland farming and grazing became difficult in these areas. <Cut to video of dead corn stalks lying broken and dried in their rows on parched fields as the desert wind blows the topsoil away. A second video clip is displayed showing widely separated patches of brown buffalo grass and scrawny cacti spread across a dusty plain. The plaintive moo’s of dying cows can be heard in the background.>
<Cut back to network Anchor.> Other countries are experiencing similar difficulties as the climate changes radically. In Mexico City, the springs of the Valley of Mexico provided water for centuries until heavy pumping from the local aquifer caused them to dry up in the nineteen-thirties. The springs which had given life to the Aztecs, Spanish colonists, and twentieth century Mexico City, have disappeared in the blink of an eye from overuse. By the nineteen-nineties wells driven deep in the Valley of Mexico provided almost all the city’s municipal supply. At that time, they produced approximately one billion gallons per day or about two-thirds the amount needed to supply the needs of twenty million people who lived in the Mexico City area. The Mexican government was forced to pipe in another five hundred million gallons per day from a surface reservoir eighty miles away. <Cut to stock film of Mexican workers excavating a three meter wide by ten meter deep trench for the construction of a vast pipeline. Rows of concrete pipe trail off into the distance.> As environmental conditions worsened over the next ten years, discouraged farmers flocked to the city in droves, driving up itís needs at a time when the rainfall over surface reservoir was declining. The recent epidemics of typhoid and cholera have been directly traced to the lack of adequate water supplies for the poorer areas of Mexico City. <Çut to stock footage of a children’s hospital in Latin America filled with screaming sick infants and toddlers. [The footage isn’t from Mexico, but the director of the network news has long since cannily realized that almost no one will be able to recognize the precise clinic where the video was shot. The lean faces of the starving children are recognizably Latino, which is enough to let the film pass the network censors without objection. The faces and the architecture of Latin America are all too similar for the provincial New York censors who have never left the environs of their overpopulated megalopolis to see the differences.] The ravages of poor nutrition and disease are written upon the stretched skin of the children’s gaunt faces.> Critics have said that if Mexico City could control its population growth and begin an aggressive program of sewage and waste disposal treatment, there might be a chance that the city can survive. <Cut to video of downtown Mexico City during rush hour; the hordes of workers walking home en mass and the unmanageable traffic jam are evident to the viewer. A dingy grey pall of pollution hangs in the distance.> Political and economic observers have said on the other hand, that for all practical purposes the criticís ideas are too politically hazardous and expensive to employ during a period when the Mexican Gross National Product and currency has gone into free fall.