"US Drought Monitor" Provides Weekly Updates on National Water Shortage
by Jesse Fox, Tel Aviv, Israel on 03. 2.08
For months now, several areas of the USA have been confronting severe water problems. In particular, the southeastern United States, where massive growth over the last few decades has outpaced rational water planning, is facing an extreme drought that shows no signs of improving in the near future. The ongoing water crisis has led to some tough questions for decision-makers, who have resorted to border disputes, and even the occasional design solution.
Luckily for citizens, policy-makers and TreeHuggers, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's National Drought Mitigation Center, in cooperation with several federal agencies, produces a weekly map called the US Drought Monitor, with updated info on the state of the country's droughts. Using the handy tool (check it out here), anyone who is interested can access all kinds of data about the country's water supplies, including regional and chronological information.
The picture doesn't look pretty though. According to the Monitor, large portions of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee are currently experiencing "extreme" to "exceptional" drought conditions. That this is due to mismanagement of water resources becomes particularly clear when one looks at the affected areas in relation to the region's rivers, which run straight through all of the severely affected areas, whereas river-less areas of the southwestern US are in much better shape.
Perhaps it's time to start looking at solutions such as "toilet to tap" and reducing storm water pollution, or even (gasp) growth management?
Image:: US Drought Monitor
I don't think it is rational to deduce that the exceptional drought conditions in the Southeast are "due to mismanagement of water resources." The drought is due to lack of precipitation, plain and simple. Even if the most intelligent management systems were put into place in the Southeast, there would still be a drought, because it still wouldn't be raining.
A few years ago, the pendulum was swinging the other way, and the Southwest looked much worse than the Southeast. Why are they doing so much better now? Not because they implemented "(gasp) growth management," but because precipitation levels improved. And the "river-less" regions of the Southwest have ersatz rivers, called aqueducts.