Looming Environmental Disaster

Drought-Stricken South Facing Tough Choices

ATLANTA, Oct. 15 — For the first time in more than 100 years, much of the Southeast has reached the most severe category of drought, climatologists said Monday, creating 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.

The hard numbers have shocked the Southeast into action, even as many people wonder why things seem to have gotten so bad so quickly.

Can't say that this is a surprise. I have been aware of the drought for years. I noticed as everything got worse this year. The river just down the street was so low a few months ago that you could walk from one side to the other without being more than waste deep at the deepest point. If this trend continues, it is going to be really bad, really soon. Maybe this is what it takes to get people in the South to wake up and realize that this is why conservation and responsible use of our resources is important.

I think this guy says it best:

“I think there’s been an ostrich-head-in-the-sand syndrome that has been growing,” said Mark Crisp, an Atlanta-based consultant with the engineering firm C. H. Guernsey. “Because we seem to have been very, very slow in our actions to deal with an impending crisis.”