‘Diminishing Returns’ – Scott Keyes

Producing nearly one and a half billion bushels per year, Nebraska is unquestionably one of the best places in the world to grow corn. Though Nebraska’s fertile soil and hot humid summers provide an ideal environment for corn, parts of the area lack sufficient precipitation to adequately meet the demands of such a water intensive crop.  As a result, seventy percent of the state’s annual corn yield is produced with the help of ground water irrigation, thus Nebraska farms account for one sixth of the nation’s irrigated agricultural land.

A majority of this water comes from the Ogallala Aquifer, the largest underground water system in the US, roughly the size of Lake Michigan.  Though the aquifer does replenish itself naturally, current levels of irrigation, combined with an increasingly hot and arid climate, create an unsustainable situation.  In some areas, water levels in the Ogallala have dropped more than a hundred feet in the last fifty years.

Leaving no struggling animals or marooned boats in its wake, this profound water loss does not lend itself to the types of dramatic scenes which often catapult other environmental issues into the public consciousness.  Hidden underground, the alarming depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer literally lacks visibility.  When California native, Scott Keyes, began doing research for his Stored Potential submission and for the first time learned of the diminishing Ogallala Aquifer, he saw the potential to make this hidden resource visible.  By taking advantage of the silo’s enormous height to create a 1:1 scale model of well 5N 40W28CDA, a groundwater irrigation unit located in Chase County, Nebraska, Keyes creates a tangible snapshot of the region’s precarious relationship to its most invaluable natural resource.  Using USGS data gathered since 1970, historical water levels within the well are marked at five year intervals along the silo’s interior – the walls that once contained the commodity created by confluence of sun energy and underground water.  The jury agreed that by rendering this important water issue visible, this submission represents a byproduct of the region’s agricultural legacy which is as real and concrete as the abandoned silos on which it is situated.

Scott Keyes currently lives in Waikiki, Hawaii, where he is an architect for the Federal Government, working on projects for N.O.A.A., the National Park Service, and the US Navy. He received his Master of Architecture degree from the University of Toronto and has also studied at the University of Bologna and UCLA. Scott has previously worked for Bruce Mau Design and Diamond and Schmitt & Architects and has had projects featured in Canadian Architect, Spacing Magazine and The National Post.