The shebeen occasionally has made a nuisance of itself on the subject of water. Consequently, when The New York Times finds a story involving the nation's troubled rural areas, the idiotic trade war, and the country's staggeringly inadequate infrastructure, and that nonetheless is focused upon water, then the shebeen determines that it positively will be aggravating on the subject.

But suddenly, across more than 100,000 acres of Nebraska and Wyoming, there is no water to be found. The dirt is cracking. The beans are turning a sickly yellow. And the corn, which looked so promising just two weeks ago, is straining for fluid through long, scorching days. The countryside is suddenly parched because a century-old tunnel that carries irrigation water across more than 100 miles, from Wyoming to Nebraska, collapsed this month. The cause of the collapse was not yet clear but the effect has been immediate: A large expanse of farmland is parched. And hundreds of farmers, already reeling from years of low grain prices, are without water at the most critical point of the growing cycle.

Across much of the Great Plains, this growing season seemed cursed even before the irrigation crisis. First came trade wars that threw the grain markets into chaos. Then floods covered cornfields with ice chunks the size of golf carts. An abnormally wet spring delayed planting by weeks or months. Finally, just when conditions were looking more stable, the irrigation canal split open and water stopped flowing.

100,000 acres. And the tunnel was 100 years old.

A climb to the top of a hill revealed a worst-case scenario: Not far from [Buz Oliver's] property, a roughly half-mile tunnel that carried water through a large hill had collapsed in the night, leaving a swift-moving current no room to advance. Within hours, as pressure built, the earthen banks of the canal had been overwhelmed. Water busted through with such force that old-growth trees were snapped into pieces, fence posts were ripped from the ground and cows, with no time to retreat, became stranded on small islands in their former pasture. Farmers specialize in contingency planning, but this was a disaster no one saw coming.

The tunnels and canals, though old, were maintained regularly and had performed for generations with few major problems. Elected irrigation officials in both states oversee management of the canal system, which was built by the federal government. Though the cause of the breach was not yet identified, it was raising new questions about the reliance of American commerce on decaying infrastructure. In Nebraska alone, around $50 million in crops is at stake.

There is a massive crisis in the country's rural heartland. This crisis will not be solved by throwing some money at some soybean farmers. It involves the climate crisis. It involves the crumbling infrastructure.

Times were already hard. Corn prices had been low in recent years, leaving many farmers with barely enough income to cover their costs, let alone make payments on a new tractor or a new field. Farms filing for bankruptcy protection rose by 19 percent last year across the Midwest, the highest level in a decade, according to data compiled by the American Farm Bureau. But farmers in the Nebraska Panhandle and eastern Wyoming avoided the worst of the spring flooding, and with corn prices ticking upward, this felt like the year when they might finally start to get ahead. Now they face uncertainty about whether crop insurance will cover their losses, and the possibility of a monstrous tax bill to cover a permanent fix for the canal, which could cost up to $18 million.

Ignoring all of this is not working.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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