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Tennessee town has run out of water
Greg Bluestein, Associated Press
…The severe drought tightening like a vise across the Southeast has threatened the water supply of cities large and small, sending politicians scrambling for solutions. But Orme, about 40 miles west of Chattanooga and 150 miles northwest of Atlanta, is a town where the worst-case scenario has already come to pass: The water has run out.
The mighty waterfall that fed the mountain hamlet has been reduced to a trickle, and now the creek running through the center of town is dry.
Three days a week, the volunteer fire chief hops in a 1961 fire truck at 5:30 a.m. – before the school bus blocks the narrow road – and drives a few miles to an Alabama fire hydrant. He meets with another truck from nearby New Hope, Ala. The two drivers make about a dozen runs back and forth, hauling about 20,000 gallons of water from the hydrant to Orme’s tank.
(1 November 2007)
Peak Water (video)
Wired Science
The concept that the earth’s oil resources are drying up is called “peak oil.” But it’s not just oil that’s disappearing – the earth’s fresh water supplies are dwindling, and H2O is an expensive commodity. We travel to the American Southwest to see what the driest communities in the country are doing to keep water flowing for desert populations.
(2 November 2007)
Atlanta Urinals, Fountain Run Dry as UPS, Coke Fight Drought
Mary Jane Credeur and Laurence Viele Davidson, Bloomberg
Urinals without water. Fountains without water. A waterfall without water.
Dry is the goal as United Parcel Service Inc., Coca-Cola Co. and other companies in the Atlanta area rally to cut water use in response to the region’s most extreme drought since at least the 1920s. Metropolitan Atlanta, which has added more new residents than any other U.S. city since 2000, may face limits on growth if the shortage persists, business officials said.
… Atlanta-based UPS, the world’s biggest package-delivery company, is testing urinals that drain without water. Coca-Cola turned off the fountain in front of its Atlanta headquarters and canceled planting of new flowers that would require watering, said Kirsten Witt, spokeswoman.
Even the city’s aquarium found ways to save a few drops. The Georgia Aquarium bills itself as the world’s largest, with 8 million gallons (30 million liters) of water that is home to sharks, sea lions, coral and other aquatic life.
… “The big businesses have gotten the idea,” said Sam Booher, an Augusta resident who monitors water issues in Georgia for the Sierra Club. “ They are looking ahead.”
The moves may be too late: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that Lake Lanier, the city’s reservoir, may run out of clean water in about 110 days.
(31 October 2007)
Thirst refusal
Edward Helmore, The Guardian
The California fires are the result of an increasingly severe drought now stretching over much of the south and west of the US. Edward Helmore on how development and climate change are leading to water conflicts
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The destruction of nearly 182,000 hectares (450,000 acres) and the displacement of a million people by the worst Californian fire-storms in decades are focusing attention on what may, over the next 50 years, become the most pressing environmental issue in the US – the south-western states are drying up.
In one sense, the recent inferno has little to do with climate change or the pressure of human settlement. Southern California is arid by nature, the Santa Ana winds typically blow in the autumn, and wildfires are a natural part of the cycle. It is also true that this time the drought is more intense, the winds are stronger, the fires larger and their effects more keenly felt.
But the climate has had an impact. For almost seven years rain has been rare in southern California, and much of the south-west of the US. In 2004, the region did experience record rainfall and the desert bloomed with vegetation, but little or no rain has fallen since on the coastal and inland valleys behind Los Angeles and San Diego. The tinderbox-dry vegetation has become fuel, turning California’s usually blue skies black with smoke.
The severity of the regional drought, coupled with climate change, population and developmental pressures, and the infrastucture for bringing water to the desert from the Rocky Mountains in the north operating well beyond its design capacity, could spell disaster.
…Across much of the south-west, one of the fastest developing regions in the US, the change in weather patterns and long-term climate shifts is exacerbated by population pressure – more people demanding more water from dwindling supplies. Since the development of the west was contingent on the construction of great dams and reservoirs, the effects of seeing the water supply shrinking are unsettling.
One result is growing tension between seven states – Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and California – that are all dependent on water allocations from the Colorado river. Last summer saw a substantial reduction in the Colorado’s water flow, which is fed by melting snow from the Rocky mountains. The situation, warns Kevin Trenberth, a hydrologist for the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, “is a situation that is going to cause water wars”.
(31 October 2007)
