The American Dust Bowl of the 1930s was one of the worst environmental disasters in the history of the United States. Due to poor farming practices, more than 75% of the topsoil was blown away by the end of the decade. By 1938, a massive conservation effort by the Federal Government had greatly reduced the amount of blowing soil. The government bought up failed cropland and the Soil Conservation Service restored the eroded farmland. Later it created many National Grasslands such as Rita Blanca to preserve the soil. But for a long time, the land still failed to yield a decent living. Between 1930 and 1940, about 3.5 million people moved out of the Plains states. In just over a year, over 86,000 people migrated to California. The Dust Bowl was a human made environmental disaster involving water and land use. We are currently draining the Ogallala aquifer that has made agriculture possible in the dry part of the Southern Great Plains. If this continues, we could produce a second human made catastrophe in this same place. It is already happening in some areas but will be more widespread in the next 20 to 30 years. It may have harmful consequences to agriculture in the mid-West and the economic cost could ripple throughout our economy. It could also devastate the communities of the Southern Great Plains and possibly create a new wave of environmental refugees like the Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.