How Seaboard Foods rebuilt the Oklahoma Panhandle’s economy, ushering in a new era of groundwater depletion
Mike Shannon’s city hall office is a “war room” for water. Maps of wells and charts of usage rates cover the beige room’s meeting table and desk. A large television screen mounted on the wall displays satellite images of a future groundwater well project. Coworkers visit throughout the day, often to talk about those plans to pump more water. As city manager of Guymon — a town of about 13,000 in the state’s panhandle — Shannon oversees a network of 17 groundwater wells, all operating near capacity to draw water from the Ogallala Aquifer, the only water source in this arid region of tumbleweeds and sand dunes. … At the top of the list was Seaboard, a pork processing plant on the north side of town that slaughtered more than 20,000 hogs daily. The plant used 3,500 gallons of water a minute, three times the amount used by all the homes in Guymon combined.