Drought in southern US paints a dry future
Pastor Dale Morgan
Drought in southern US paints a dry future*
By Tom Leonard in Orme, Tennessee
Last Updated: 2:20am GMT 12/11/2007
The Red Cross has just dropped off an emergency supply of drinking
water. Now Tony Reames hands it out - one case per household - to the
grateful townsfolk who come to his office.
Lake Lanier, which supplies most of the water to Atlanta is running dry.
Drought in southern US paints a dry future
The level of Lake Lanier, which supplies most of the water to Atlanta,
has dropped by 17ft
By dusk it has all gone and Mr Reames, the local mayor, drives up a
dusty road to begin his daily ritual of turning on Orme's water supply
at 6pm.
The sleepy community is suddenly a hive of activity as residents
scramble to wash clothes, flush lavatories, take showers and store water
for cooking and washing before - just three hours later - Mr Reames
turns the supply off again until the next evening.
By then, Orme's water tank will have been replenished by the town's
ancient fire engine, now helped by a pair from neighbouring areas.
Together, they haul it in from a fire hydrant three miles away.
Orme, a former mining town in Tennessee that has always relied on water
from a mountain spring, has dried up with a severity that has stunned
America.
"When I saw the supplies, I thought, 'That can't be the Red Cross. We're
Americans!'," said resident Susan Anderson.
"It's made us realise how wasteful we used to be. We used to think
nothing of keeping it on while we washed our teeth. Now, when we hear
the whistle of the water in the pipes at 6pm, we'll go and fill up as
many jugs as we can find."
Many fear that tiny Orme is the canary in the coalmine, the desiccated
shape of things to come in a country in which experts say water has
become an even more precious resource than oil.
For the first time in more than 100 years, much of the south-east of the
United States has reached the most severe category of drought.
Shortage of rain in these usually wet states has not been the only
factor. Two weeks ago, the US Government Accountability Office warned
that at least 36 states will face catastrophic water shortages within
five years due to a combination of drought, rising temperatures, urban
sprawl and population growth.
Officials in Atlanta, one of America's fastest-growing cities, say they
could run out of drinking water by January. The level of Lake Lanier,
which supplies most of the city's water, has dropped by 17 ft.
The situation is so desperate that Sonny Perdue, Georgia's governor, is
holding a multi-denominational service in Atlanta to pray for rain.
"The only solution is rain, and the only place we get that is from a
higher power," said the governor's spokesman.
A sort of "water rage" is starting to be felt. An Atlanta TV station
named and shamed a millionaire after it emerged he consumed 60 times
more than the average household.
Back in Orme, Mr Reames said he feared for Atlanta. "We can survive.
We're 145 people but you've got 4.5 million there. What are they going
to do?"
Since he instituted rationing in August, local people have borne the
shortage with patience, he said. But sometimes he has bent the rules.
"I've left the water on sometimes. I shouldn't, but there are some
people who work late shifts and otherwise they'd get no water at all."
His hope is that a new pipeline, due to be completed soon, will solve
the problem.
"That will end this, unless the Tennessee River dries up - and that
could happen if people don't conserve it," he said.
Nearby towns and cities that are imposing no restrictions on water
consumption are "cutting themselves in the throat", he added.
The local consensus is that global warming has caused the drought.
However, Michael Hayes, director of the National Drought Mitigation
Centre, is cautious about pointing the finger at climate change.
He said that there have been long droughts across America before, but
they have received far less attention than more dramatic natural
disasters such as hurricanes.
He conceded, however, that Orme could be a sign of things to come.
And, he added, America's vulnerability is made worse by "our perception
that we always have enough money to solve these problems".