All water wells in Deaf Smith County tap the Ogallala Aquifer

Under all of Deaf Smith County sits one vast underground reservoir, the Ogallala — the source for essentially every fresh well here. About 95 percent of what comes up out of it feeds irrigated farming, and decades of that pumping have pulled water levels down, more in some stretches of the county than others. A well that hit water at one depth a generation ago may need to go deeper today, and there's no promise the supply lasts forever.

Most or all of the county sits inside the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District No. 1. Drilling a new well isn't just a matter of finding a driller; if your land falls in the district, you pull a permit from HPWD first, and the district keeps wells spaced apart from one another. Anyone buying rural ground to irrigate, or even to put in a domestic well, is smart to ask HPWD whether that exact tract is covered and what the current rules are before counting on the water. The district is at hpwd.org.