800-year drought in South Carolina?

That's what the state climatologist told the newspaper. Tree ring data says it's so.

Take a class; get to water your lawn

Here's a new twist in drought adaptation from Georgia, where citizens who have been under a lawn watering ban since last September may be allowed a limited reprieve in exchange for attending a class on water conservation.

Georgia drought: tension in the air about water

They held a public meeting was held about the water crisis in metro Atlanta. The conveners placed the meeting in Gainesville, next to Lake Lanier - the reservoir whose cracked, dry bottom has become the poster child for the lengthening drought. Present to address the current were officials from regional water planning, local development planning and the Atlanta area chamber of commerce. Harold Reheis, a planning consultant, quoted below, provided some straight talk about the situation.

For all the big guns of local policy who were there to speak and answer questions, it's a bit disappointing that only 125 people showed up as an audience. Maybe the feeling of powerlessness has taken over. Certainly one of the quotes published GainesvilleTimes.com indicated the dissatisfaction with explanations that must be running through the community.

Reheis, former director of Georgia's Environmental Protection Division, forecast more drought in the future - if not an extension of the current one, then something as bad or worse in the future.

"There will be a worse drought," said Harold Reheis, who served as EPD director from 1991 to 2003. "I don’t know if it will be 10 years from now or 100 years, but it’s coming."

He also offered some tough love to those in regions outside of Atlanta who have complained that the metro area has been using more than its fair share of the limited supplies.
Reheis said he hopes the comprehensive plan will reduce the "paranoia" that the rest of Georgia seems to have about metro Atlanta. Some people accuse Atlanta of consuming more than its share of water.

"I hope there will be less whining, once all the facts are out there about how much water metro Atlanta actually uses," Reheis said.

He pointed out that Georgia law does not allow a community to withdraw so much water that it dries up a stream.

"Folks downstream need water, too," he said. "Some of our neighbor states don’t have that policy. Some of those states don’t regulate water withdrawal at all."

He said in Georgia, a municipal water source must be reliable enough to yield water even during a "drought of record." The state’s current drought is the new drought of record, so it is the standard by which new water sources will be measured.

"You’re going to have to build more and bigger reservoirs in the future," Reheis said.

Scraping the bottom of the reservoir

I'm learning new things all the time about reservoir jargon. Today I was exposed for the first time to the "sediment layer" of a reservoir's water supply. Of course I've known that sediments settle and collect behind dams, sometimes to the extent that the volume of water in the reservoir shrinks over time. But more often, much of that sediment remains in suspension in the water, sinking to occupy the bottom level as what we'd recognize as watery mud.

The drought in Raleigh, North Carolina, has just about driven the region to begin providing water to residents from this sediment layer, according to the NewsObserver.

A federal study in the 1990s found that Falls Lake's bottom is filling more slowly than expected, leaving more room for water than first planned. In theory, the lake's bottom layer holds enough water to supply Raleigh and the seven other Wake County towns it serves for two to three months.

Under the proposal, the Army Corps of Engineers would sell up to about 6 1/2 billion gallons of the bottom water in four increments as needed. That's up to 87 days' worth at the lake's current draw-down rate, assuming no rain. That would come after Raleigh exhausts its regular supply, which by the most recent estimate on Tuesday stood at 113 days left.

Raleigh's City Council voted this week to ask the corps to let the city tap permanently into the surplus at the bottom. A permanent reallocation of half the lake's bottom layer would boost the city's supply by more than one-fourth -- until inevitable sediment accumulations erased it.

But once the muddy water has been tapped, there's other local source to draw from. Future planning relies on the return of the rains to refill reservoirs, after which the local and state governments will resolve to maintain higher standing levels to guard against future drought.

In a sense, the best-case scenarios are that drought periods in the future are no longer than a couple years at a time, an assumption that can no longer be considered reliable.

Atlanta - Pray for NO rain?

An article in USA Today: Thirsting for answers in dry Georgia makes an interesting comparison between the ways drought has been dealt with by authorities in Georgia and in San Diego. Begin with the fact that Georgia is normally a rainy place, while San Diego is a coastal desert. If San Diego can weather a long dry spell, why can't Atlanta?

The story provides some good lessons for adaptation. Atlanta did some stuff wrong:

...a drought that gripped this state from 1998-2002 seemed to sound the clarion call.

The Legislature, worried that fast-growing Atlanta was consuming water at the expense of the rest of the state, created a regional authority to chart a plan to manage the resource.

When a relentless drought hit last year, however, the agency's water-saving recommendations mostly had not been implemented.

...while San Diego did some stuff right:

Drought had ravaged San Diego, too, but its legacy was far different.

A six-year drought that ended in 1992 prompted conservation measures and other steps that enabled the metropolitan area to add a half-million people without substantially increasing water usage.

San Diego - being a chronically dry location - has developed what the article calls "a drought ethic" and has been innovating water-saving practices for years. Its residents are accustomed to conservation. But for Georgia to adapt to a drier future, it will take more than just hoping that the residents change their habits.

Strong, consistent leadership is necessary to create a conservation ethic, and that's been missing here, says environmentalist Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, a group that seeks to protect Atlanta's prime watershed. "There's been a lot of nice talk, education programs and studies on water conservation," she says. "But I have not seen leaders providing real incentives and regulatory programs that would yield measurable reductions in our use of water."

Atlanta's making progress and San Diego is certainly not out of the woods, but one Georgia wag pointed out the reason Georgia hasn't learned from close drought calls in the past.

"Usually about the time everybody is screaming bloody murder, there will come a huge rain," he says. "Ironically, the worst thing that can happen now is to get a heavy rain."

And then? A writer dares to ask the question

Tom Engelhardt, creator of the TomDispatch website and fellow at The Nation Institute, wrote a moving essay that questions why major American media have been so obviously avoiding the question of What if Atlanta - a city of 4.5 million - actually runs out of water?

I'm not simply being apocalyptic here. I'm just asking. It's not even that I expect answers. I'd just like to see a crew of folks with the necessary skills explore the "and then" question for the rest of us. Try to connect a few dots, or tell us if they don't connect, or just explain where the dots really are.

Of course, I've been asking this question all along in Climate Frog. I just don't qualify as "major media," or even - at this point - "minor media." I'm a guy looking at the reality and wondering when - like the frog - we're going to cop to what's going on and start making some contingency plans. For Atlanta, it's late in the game. The plans should have been made long ago. Engelhardt is not judgmental in his essay; he's looking at the big picture, where many regions are facing the "what then" question and many millions of people stand to be affected to a life-or-death degree.

I know answers to the "and then" question are not easy or necessarily simple. But if drought -- or call it "desertification" -- becomes more widespread, more common in heavily populated parts of the globe already bursting at the seams (and with more people arriving daily), if whole regions no longer have the necessary water, how many trails of tears, how many of those mass migrations or civilizational collapses are possible? How much burning and suffering and misery are we likely to experience? And what then?

Busy professions for extreme drought

If you live in the drought-affected areas of northern Georgia and Alabama, your employment fortunes might be in the dumpster or they may be soaring. Clearly, you'd better be a creative landscaper or nursery owner to be getting any business these days, but as this AP story tells us, well-drillers and water recyclers are unable to keep up with the booming demand, even when an average new well will cost $6500 to drill with no guarantee that water will be found.

"The drought's got people thinking about water more," said Charles Cone of Southern Energy Solutions in Marietta. "I think there's going to be a gradual shift toward this sort of thing."

This summer, Cone's company sold its first residential gray water recycling tank in Atlanta. The system recycles bath, shower and laundry water and reuses it for toilet flushing.

"I think it's going to change people's mind-set," he said. "You don't need potable water to flush your toilet. It's just something we've always done."

And not all landscapers are crying in their begonias. Those who sell and install miserly watering systems are being called on to save private and public greenery with drip irrigation systems and water salvaging reservoirs.

The RainHarvest Company, a suburban Atlanta business that outfits homes with systems that capture and reuse rain, said business has quadrupled since the drought began.

"People have suddenly decided that water is a lot more valuable than it was a few weeks ago. It's pretty typical — the less we have of something, the more valuable it is," said Paul Morgan, the company's co-founder. "We can't do all that business, so we've had to pick and choose."

He installs large underground tanks that capture and store falling rain water. The water can be pumped back into the home and reused in the shower, dishwasher and irrigation system, or it can be purified and used as drinking water.

"We don't want people to change their lifestyle," said Morgan. "But we'll show you how to continually reuse the water so you're not wasting it."

How Not to Deal with a Drought in Progress

Athens, Georgia, may have had its act together - at least from what the local utility manager said. But the rest of the state, and its neighboring southern states, too, seemed to have ignored the fact that they were rapidly running out of water. This New York Time story (thank goodness one major paper is closely following these extreme weather stories) tells a story of neglect, irresponsibility, delusion and probably gross over-optimism.

Maybe the past has included plenty of dry spells. A couple weeks during the normal rainy season. A couple months through a hot summer. Even a whole season of hot dry weather, lowering the reservoir levels. But this situation has been going on intensely since the last rains of the winter. Even I've been following the story long enough that it's been plain to me that there was a crisis. But look at what's been going on down there while I've been worrying about them from way out here in California:

The response to the worst drought on record in the Southeast has unfolded in ultra-slow motion. All summer, more than a year after the drought began, fountains blithely sprayed, football fields were watered, prisoners got two showers a day and Coca-Cola’s bottling plants chugged along at full strength. In early October, on an 81-degree day, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million gallon mountain of snow.

In late September, with Lake Lanier forecast to dip into the dregs of “dead storage” in less than four months, the state imposed a ban on outdoor water use. Gov. Sonny Perdue declared October “Take a Shorter Shower Month.”

On Saturday, he declared a state of emergency for more than half the state and asked for federal assistance, though the state has not yet restricted indoor water use or cut back on major commercial and industrial users, a step that could cause a significant loss of jobs.

Jeez Louise! Can we please elect some intelligent problem solving managers to public office? Soon? Here's more evidence of criminal incompetence:

The sense of urgency has been slow to take hold. Last year, a bill to require low-flow water devices be installed in older houses prior to resale died in the Legislature. Most golf courses are classified as “agricultural.” Water permits are still approved on a first-come, first-served basis.

And Georgia is not at the back of the pack; Alabama, where severe drought is more widespread, has not passed legislation calling for a management plan.

A realistic statewide plan, experts say, would tell developers that they cannot build if no water is available, and might have restricted some of the enormous growth in the Atlanta area over the last decade. Already, officials have little notion how to provide for a projected doubling of demand over the next 30 years. The ideas that have been floated, including piping water from Tennessee or desalinating ocean water, will require hundreds of billions of dollars and painful decisions the state has been loathe to undertake.

What can you say but, "Oy!"

And the Drought Goes On

It's not like Athens, Georgia's government didn't prepare for a drought. In fact, most responsible local resource districts have contingency plans in place for what they define as a drought - which is an extended period with no rain that most likely won't happen again the next year. In a column responding to public criticism, the manager of the local unified district described what looks like a competent plan, which is still being "methodically implemented." Yet, the actual drought has gone beyond what had been thought of as a "100-year" event.

The column explains that in 1996, a reservoir was planned and subsequently built as a 90-day backup water supply. A Comprehensive Drought Management Plan was developed by the government, in concert with local businesses in 2000 and updated in 2004. In response to that plan, measures were put into action to reduce water usage by 10%, and then by 20% - with public response hitting those goals in both instances.

None of these decisions were easy. As the governing authority, the mayor and commission were called upon to make difficult community-value decisions to provide for critical community needs. They have held to those decisions despite unwarranted criticism from some sectors of the community. They might be called upon to make even more difficult decisions if the drought continues and a 30 percent or greater sustainable reduction in water use is needed.

Now the local government is poised on the verge of implenting what they call "Step F," where "the plan gives first priority for water use to health and public safety; second priority to residential use; and third priority to industrial, commercial and institutional use." In other words, business is going to suffer.

Athens may have been the best prepared community in the drought area, but without rainfall that preparedness may only have bought them a bit more time than their neighbors before the impact lands on livelihoods.

Georgia drought on my mind

The American Southeast has been baking and shriveling through drought conditions not seen for at least a century. With much larger populations and more land devoted to agriculture and timber, the demands on water supplies have grown proportionately.

Now northern Georgia is facing what may someday be regarded as "classic drought adaptation." What Georgians do over the next year may provide a model of how to (or how not to) change habits, choices and perhaps a regional economy to deal with a radically different definition of "normal."

Today's New York Times story, "Drought-Stricken South Facing Tough Choices," describes " an emergency so serious that some cities are just months away from running out of water."

Officials in the central North Carolina town of Siler City estimate that without rain, they are 80 days from draining the Lower Rocky River Reservoir, which supplies water for the town’s 8,200 people.

In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days.

Typical of our culture of denial, many people are now asking how things could have gotten so bad with no warning or efforts to prepare for it. The Georgia state climatologist called drought "the Rodney Dangerfield of natural disasters." It doesn't get the respect and attention of hurricanes and floods until it reaches extreme conditions where radical conservation measures are demanded.

Local businesses are suffering, especially those that attract customers to what were once lakeside locations.

The lake keeps sinking further and further away from the Little River Bar and Grill, costing the owner a quarter of his customers. As a result, he was forced to layoff four employees on Monday -- and that may not be the end.

"We're trying to hold on to everybody we can," said Ridley. "But you can only pay payroll for so long and continue to operate. So I guess there will be more layoffs down the road."

The Chairman of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce is calling for state legislators to enact a new water plan, including creation of more reservoirs. Those won't solve the current problems, though. There are no wet periods in the winter forecast to offer relief.

Meanwhile, the University of Georgia has created a Drought Website to report on emergency conservation measures, the status of agriculture and condition like the rising number of mosquitos and the accompanying threat of West Nile disease.

Water wars - a mild domestic example

Rivers run across borders and often form borders. Water rights have always been a sore point between communities with shared access to sources, and the reduction of water supplies from alternative sources make the conflicts even more intense.

Here's a story from the Atlanta Journal Constitution about one such conflict currently playing out in the midst of the Southeast's record-breaking drought. Georgia and Alabama are at odds over water in the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa River Basin. The Army Corps of Engineers is serving as the mediator in the argument.

This is one example of a social stressor that may become much more common if drought conditions settle on other regions in the U.S. It leaves me wondering if we'll begin to see such conflicts worked out in advance of actual crisis, when the parties are able to think more clearly than they'd be able to under pressure of a severe drought.

During a teleconference last week with representatives from both states, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials said they are considering a reduction in the amount of water released from Allatoona Lake by the end of this month — a move strongly opposed by Alabama.

In addition to concerns about having enough water for operations at power plants and pulp and paper mills, Alabama officials are worried dredging on the Alabama River, which gets some of its water from Allatoona, will have to stop if water levels get too low. The Corps is dredging the river to make room for barges serving mills and other manufacturers.

Allatoona, which provides drinking water for Cobb County and other northwest metro Atlanta communities, has dropped 6 1/2 feet since the beginning of August, and is now more than 11 feet below full. The low lake level has exacerbated problems with an algae bloom in the lake, leading to some odor and taste complaints about the drinking water.

The Corps, which owns and operates the federal reservoir, began releasing additional water from the lake in late July after Alabama complained of not receiving enough to mitigate effects from the historic drought. In the worst-case scenario, Corps estimates show Allatoona could reach a record low level by the end of the year.

This month, congressional delegations from Georgia and Alabama met separately with Army Secretary Pete Geren, the top Army official who oversees the Corps.

According to The Associated Press, U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) said the additional releases from Allatoona must stop soon "or we're not going to have a lake. We're just going to have a mudhole."

Alabama officials contend metro Atlanta is getting more than its fair share of water.

The Southeast Drought and Mitigation

I've previously mentioned the National Drought Mitigation Center, located at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln campus. Mitigation, as they define it, is "taking actions in advance of drought to reduce its long-term risk."

In fact, Alabama has a drought mitigation plan, finalized in 2004. The abstract of the plan includes these statements:

There is no way to prevent a drought from occurring, however the effects of a drought can be reduced or even eliminated altogether. The impact of drought can be reduced by improving the overall forest health which reduces the risk of drought-caused fires, by improving and maintaining water systems which will reduce pumping failures. Also, by establishing and implementing contingency plans, such as, predetermined water conservation measures, or by designating alternative emergency water sources.

In actual practice, it's not at all clear that these mitigation actions had yet been taken, and if they had, that they were effective. Bark beetle infestations of the southern pine forests are quite the opposite of "improving overall forest health." The extended period of wildfires in Georgia and Florida through the spring and early summer point to a failure reduce that risk. Whatever water conservation measures have been taken don't seem to be "mitigating" anything.

To put the drought into graphic presentation, NDMC provides an array of maps including this one that shows drought severity according to the "Palmer Index." Note that the severe drought in the Southeast is a relatively small area compared to what is happening in the West, where the tendency toward drought is more natural.

Pot Warming, King Frog Settling

As the extended drought conditions continue to fuel the 200,000-acre burn in Florida and Georgia, self-styled king, George W. Bush, is responding to the Supreme Court's rebuke of his administration's de-clawed EPA.

President Bush responded Monday to the Supreme Court's rebuke of his administration for refusing to regulate greenhouse gases by rehashing a plan from his State of the Union speech to boost ethanol and tinker with fuel efficiency standards.

In essence, though, the Prez is stalling for time and could end up doing nothing through the remaining 18 months of his term.

"In effect, the president asked his agency heads to share ideas and come up with a plan that is due three weeks before he leaves office," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming

So the remarkable granite-hard denial at the top of the most well-endowed government in the world continues. For the rest of those 18 months, at least, it appears that we won't have much - if any - leadership in realistic action from the White House.

As to the wildfires in the Southeast, they're another example of how our human settlement patterns fail to accomodate the realities of the natural world and the probable effects of climate change.

Florida in particular has undergone an explosion in population – a growth of about 13 percent between 2000 and 2006. This has meant that more and more people are pushing into rural areas. In dry weather conditions, such regions can be rife with dry, crackling brush – ideal kindling for a wildfire sparked by a bolt of lightning, discarded cigarette butt, or another trigger.

In years past, foresters worked hard to clear this brush with controlled burns. Now, however, with more homes in these areas, the options for intentional burns are more limited.