It seems like only yesterday FEMA was paying southern states to relieve their emergency drought conditions. Now the south is facing low levels again, and things are getting colorful.
Brown water, beaver battle among early signs of water woes
ATLANTA (AP) — Beaver dams have been demolished, burbling fountains silenced, and the drinking water in one southern town has taken on the light brownish color of sweet tea.
Though water shortages have yet to drastically change most people’s lifestyles, southerners are beginning to realize that they’ll need to save their drinking supplies with no end in sight to an eight-month drought.
Already, watering lawns and washing cars is restricted in some parts of the South, and more severe water limits loom if long-range forecasts of below-normal rain hold true through the rest of 2016.
The drought arrived without warning in Chris Benson’s bathroom last week in Griffin, Georgia.
“My son noticed it when he went to take his bath for the evening,” said Benson, 43. “The water was kind of a light brown color and after we ran it for a while, it actually looked like a light-colored tea. A little disturbing.”
The problem was that Griffin’s reservoir is nearly 8 feet below normal, leaving “a high level of manganese” in the remaining water, but not making it unsafe, city officials told residents in a Nov. 16 “water discoloration update.” Benson watched that water turn from brown to “kind of a light green tint” before clearing up, he said.
It’s no better in Tennessee, where about 300 of the state’s 480 water systems serve areas suffering moderate to exceptional drought, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said.
Across the South, communities relying on depleted watersheds can’t afford to waste what they’ve got left, said Denise Gutzmer at the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.
She also tracked a mass mussel die-off due to low water in southwestern Virginia, and described how hundreds of volunteers removed beer bottles and car parts from the bottom of Alabama’s Lake Purdy, which has 20 feet of water, three-fourths of its capacity. She even heard how workers dismantled beaver dams to increase water flow in west Georgia’s Tallapoosa River.
“That really underscores the desperation of the situation, like ‘Ok, we’ve got to clear the beaver dams,'” Gutzmer said.
That’s right. Before you actually stop washing cars and watering lawns, trap beavers. Because we all know beaver dams ‘steal water’ just like piggy banks ‘steal’ pennies. I hate when they do that, robbing the change in my pockets that I was going to carelessly let drip away or lose. Gosh. I’m so glad the the Associated Press took down this unchallenged quote as gospel and republished it in all 50 states across the country so that everyone can read how beavers steal water, the little kleptos. One of my very favorite things about the AP is how everyone syndicates what they say verbatim and there is no way to confront the clever reporter who in this case is the very ecologically wise, Jeff Martin.
Grrr.
Oh and 9 times less drought!
Any way thank you Linda of Oregon (formerly Martinez) for sending me this article on yahoo and thank you to my new beaver alert program that I’m loving very much (especially with retired librarian Bob Kobres of Georgia’s excellent help with my ‘boolean’ terms):
((beavers OR beaver) AND Martinez) AND “worth a dam” -football -soccer -track
Google Alerts has become laughable in how many important articles it misses, I have fired them, my new free
program is Talkwalker and I very highly recommend them. I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to get deliveries of important beaver news without having to go hunt them down. So thanks again for a wonderful addition to the beaver battle!
