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On a cloudy Tuesday last November, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue convened an unusual gathering on the steps of the capitol building in Atlanta. With his state mired in the 21st month of a historic drought, the governor had decided it was time for an appeal to the Almighty. Backed by a boisterous youth choir and several local pastors, he led 250 concerned constituents in solemn prayer. Their plea was simple: "We have come together for one reason and one reason only," Perdue intoned. "To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm."The next day, up to an inch of rain fell in and around Atlanta—an early Thanksgiving present and the first rainfall the region had seen in weeks. It rained at Christmastime too. In fact, it rained for nine of the last 12 days of the year. The city's prayers, it seemed, had been answered.
Skeptics were quick to note that weather reports in the days leading up to the vigil showed a fair chance of precipitation. But whether a testament to the powers of prayer or meteorology, the showers had no lasting impact. Georgia is experiencing the worst drought to strike the Southeast in 100 years of record keeping. The strain on an already tight supply has set off "water wars," pitting farmers against city dwellers and one state against another in a region of the United States where water has always been plentiful.
And it's not just the Southeast. On the other side of the continent, the vast swath of land that runs from the mountains of Wyoming to the desert of Southern California is in the ninth year of its own record-breaking dry spell. Water levels at two massive reservoirs serving millions of people in seven states have plummeted to the halfway mark, with slim prospects of ever regaining full capacity.
In analyzing the conditions that led to these problems, scientists blame everything from climate change and the global weather pattern known as La Niña to poor resource management and rampant development. Whatever the causes, persistent droughts have pushed these two regions to the brink of a crisis that threatens most of the nation. A 2003 federal report found that officials in 36 states expect local or statewide water shortages in the next decade. And that's with normal rainfall. Under drought conditions, that number jumps to 46 states.
With so much of the country now at risk, it's time to ask a momentous question: Is America actually running out of water?
Drastic Measures
Scanning his parched pastures last June, Gerald Long knew he had a problem. With one dry year behind him and another staring him in the face, the Bainbridge, Georgia, rancher had no hay to sustain his cattle through the winter. There was none from the year before, and with so little rain, his spring crop had failed. To make up for the shortage, he'd have to plant an extra feed crop and hope his overtaxed irrigation system would provide enough water to make it grow. It was something that he hadn't done in 35 years of farming and that would saddle him with thousands of dollars in increased costs. "I had to push everything to the maximum to make sure we had some winter feed for the cows," he says. "But you do what you have to do."
Long's emergency measures kept his cows from going hungry. Other ranchers weren't so lucky. "A lot of Georgia farmers ran out of hay last year," says University of Georgia livestock economist Curt Lacy. Forced to buy hay on the open market, they were jolted by a 43 percent price increase from the previous year. "I've never seen anything like it," says Lacy.
Neither has anyone else. The drought currently punishing the Southeast has been rated "exceptional" by climatologists—the kind that happens once every 50 to 100 years. As one dry month follows another, states and municipalities have imposed tight restrictions on outdoor water use for landscaping, swimming pools, and car washing, and Georgia's governor has required local governments to cut water consumption by ten percent.
Making a virtue out of necessity, many residents have embraced conservation with good-humored resignation. At Athens restaurants that are trying to cut back on dishwashing, "drinking wine in a paper cup has become the new chic," says Georgia's state climatologist, David Stooksbury.
"You see people driving around proudly in their filthy cars," adds Chris Scalley, who owns a fishing guide service on the Chattahoochee River 25 miles northeast of Atlanta. "Every little bit counts."
Growing Pains
While lack of rainfall is the immediate culprit, the underlying problem is more profound: a water supply that cannot keep pace with a rapidly expanding population.
At the heart of that supply is Lake Lanier, a man-made reservoir at the headwaters of the Chattahoochee River. Last fall the lake's water level sank to an all-time low. The effects of that drop have reverberated beyond Georgia, to the neighboring states of Alabama and Florida.
Built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s, Lake Lanier was one of the great public works projects that defined the postwar era. A chief purpose was to prevent flooding in Atlanta and other points downstream. Today Lanier is also the main water source for more than three million residents in Atlanta and its suburbs. The Corps controls the release of water from the reservoir into the Chattahoochee, which runs south through Atlanta and along the Georgia-Alabama border to the Florida panhandle. There it becomes the Apalachicola River, which drains into the Gulf of Mexico. As water released from Lanier runs downstream through a series of lakes and dams, it supplies hundreds of towns, factories, farms, power plants, and recreational facilities in all three states.
Here's the rub: The area that collects the water that feeds into Lanier, called the drainage basin, occupies only 1,040 square miles. "That's extremely small," says David Stooksbury, considering that since Lanier was built, Georgia's population has increased from about 4 million to nearly 10 million and continues to grow by more than 200,000 a year. Metro Atlanta has jumped from 1 million people to more than 5 million.
For the better part of two decades, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have been locked in a legal struggle with the Corps of Engineers over the rights to Lanier's water. Georgia reached an agreement with the Corps in 2003 to increase Atlanta's allotment by 65 percent, a deal that Alabama Governor Bob Riley attacked as a "massive water grab." The plan was struck down by a federal court last February.
As the water wars continue, some Georgians accuse officials of dragging their feet. "This watershed can only provide so much water for the population here," says Sally Bethea, executive director of Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy group based in Atlanta. "There has been a refusal or inability on the part of most of our leaders to admit that fact and to look harder at how we could more efficiently use our water."
If there's a bright spot for the Southeast, it's that the drought surely won’t last forever. The region typically averages 50 inches of rainfall a year and is lodged between two major storm-generating bodies of water, the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. One good tropical storm year would replenish water stocks—at least until the next drought. "While there are certainly hazards built into those storms, they tend to act as drought busters as they move inland," says Jeffrey Underwood, Nevada's state climatologist.
That's no reason for complacency. Brian Fuchs, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, predicts that periodic droughts will remain a natural part of the climate in the Southeast and that their impact will likely worsen. "Water is a finite resource," Fuchs says. "Growth and development may not be sustainable at their current levels. To just sit back and wait for the next hurricane is a false hope."
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