Where you at, Quirky? Town? State?

I'm working, with another lawyer, on a water transfer from the TVA-controlled Tennessee River, to the Atlanta water district. It's surely not a popular proposal, but it need not be a permanent fixture, either. It's been an interesting sixty days, that's for sure.

Sorry Quirk.

We were bone dry here last year (and for several before that). We are a little above our annual average, but starting to get dry again. Our main reservoir is at historic lows.

The main advantage we have here is a large underground "lake".

Hang in there. It'll change.

>> Imagine walking into Lowes garden center on Nov 3, when during an ordinary year, there'd be hoards of customers pushing and prodding their way through lines with carts full of plants, lawn seed, trees etc, only to find the garden center sent back all their merchandise.Ahhmmmmm ... as was the Lowes in Schererville IN. 11/03. It's Christmas time for retailers, due to the slow down in housing sales. Menards, Home Depot, Wal-Mart etc. all have put their garden things in storage around here, and now have 20' tall blow up X-mas decorations inside those areas.

Some people do decorate their lawns, and homes ... stomping around on dormant, delicate grass seedlings, leaving their footprints in a lawn that is unable to recuperate ... unlike us "Lawn Nazi's"

Crazy people out there in this world, I tell 'ya! :-)

Here is a link that might be useful: Retailers seek to cash in amid economic uncertainty

Quirky, I read a story in todays paper about how fans at Georgia's football game yesterday were warned--no flushing allowed. The story went on to say that crews put up signs in bathrooms asking people not to flush "if it's yellow" and to leave the handle pulling to attendants.

I knew the Southeast is in a drought, but after reading that story and then reading your post I realize how serious the situation is.

Anyone you know of having water wells drilled?

Q2,

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Even businesses that don't use water for their "processes", still need to have bathrooms. If the toilets don't flush, I guess the occupancy permit would be invalid, right?

Philes, I am only several miles away from the Buford Dam if you know where that is. If not maps.google.com will show you.

rcnaylor, that's what I kept saying until now. I've really lost hope that this was just a temporary thing. Now they're saying this pattern is going to go on through the winter and longer.

Gary, you are right to some extent that the holiday merchandise is already out, earlier that I ever remember seeing it since it was out well before halloween. But they haven't brought in the real Christmas trees yet. How long can you keep one of them... They can't bring them in just yet. And usually this is prime time for fall planting here.

First & goal, I suppose you mean the urinals. And yeah they have been promoting letting piss ferment in public restrooms where there are urinals.
There is a movement among die hard conservationists to just fill up the toilet and flush it at the end of the day.
Some city officials like Atlanta's Mayer Shirley Franklin is advising people to flush as normal due to the worry of spreading infectious diseases. They are instead offering people cash incentives to downgrade to a low flow 1.6gpf toilet. I've said all along it's those g#&*%( low flow toilets that are causing the problem. You gotta flush those things more frequently and hold the lever down longer to prevent from clogging the toilet. But it's the same pea-brain politicians coming up with these ideas that landed us in this dilemma to begin with. Make no mistake about it, this is 25% weather and 75% idiots making bad decisions.

And I know of one very large estate home that is a new construction that has a sign out front irrigation from well. They have a fountain and circular driveway and that stuff. And I know of some commercial properties that have those signs too. Whether or not they really are using well water, who knows. What I do know is that even very deep wells are drying up. They really aren't cost effective to install for most yards in this area (subdivision yards). You really gotta have a lot of money and nothing better to do with it.

And last but not least, Alex I don't know. I figured since they're putting back the treated sewage back into lake lanier then we can flush to our hearts content. They keep granting CO's because money talks and apparently building hundreds of suburban office and light industrial parks and having them sit empty for years is making somebody money. Politicians and banks being my primary suspects.

Once a month was sounding pretty darned good to me. I guess we all have our problems. We broke our drought this year, finally. We had 50 inches of rain during the 100 days of summer. Mildest summer in many, many ways. Now we have not had rain since early Sept. It's looking like things are going back to normal. The large underground lake is very important to us, too.

Wait until you have two or more years without rain, it will be real funny.

Most of Tennesse is in the severest drought of at least my lifetime. It was the hottest and dryest summer ever. There was a story about a small town outside of Chattanooga, Orme I think it was, that sends it's volunteer fireman to Alabama 8 times a day in the firetruck to fill up from a hydrant and then bring it back to fill up the town water tank. The water is cut on for the town from 6-9 PM each day. The other 21 hours there is no water for any purpose. Oviously they are not allowing watering of any kind. They are doing well to bathe and use the restroom and wash clothes.

It is scary dry.

"Wait until you have two or more years without rain, it will be real funny."

I'm sort of surprised that someone in agriculture would refer to this disaster as funny. I suspect that if this continues for more than a year it will be a katrina type of situation.

I'll second texas-weed. Although I wouldn't call it funny, I wouldn't wish a katrina on anyone as you have upon yourself.

The west has been fighting over water for 100 years. I think it is time that the green lush east has to get with it.

Go through water restrictions for 3 years straight, towns running out of water etc. no-grass just dust. Disaster you haven't yet.

Here is the story that larjoranj referred to.

Check out the last paragraph....

"I feel for the folks in Atlanta," he says, his gravelly voice barely rising above the sound of rushing water from the town's tank. "We can survive. We're 145 people. You've got 4.5 million people down there. What are they going to do? It's a scary thought."

Here is a link that might be useful: Tennessee town has run out of water

QQ it was meant as sarcastic humor. At least you can still take a bath, wash dishes, cook, flush toilets, etc.. In our area we had two-years worth of drought and folks wells were blowing sand that could not afford to drill deep to the Trinity River aquafier.

"At least you can still take a bath, wash dishes, cook, flush toilets, etc"

The days of doing that are numbered. Literally.
This place had a population and development boom that is more than the available water supply can service during a time of extreme drought given that a lot of that water is sent to other places.

Here in central Iowa we have had a SURPLUS of rain this year. Locally I had over 6.5 inches of rain in October and the average is 2.75 inches.

Wet fields have delayed the corn and soybean harvest this fall. Many counties have had crop insurance kick in due to flooded fields earlier this year. Soil moisture is above average for this time of year.

My lawn has not been watered once this season and has needed mowing every 4 to 5 days.

It's a good thing we are wet, as we have an corn ethanol plant in our small town (pop 4700) that uses 1,000,000 (one million) gallons of water each day.

Corn ethanol is vastly overrated for sure. I had no idea it'd use that much water like that for processing. What a rip.

Depends... what is the water used for in that plant?

I guess I am wondering in my little pea-brain how is it that we can set up pipe lines for natural gas to flow to determined areas across the USA but we can't seem to find a means to pipe (or transport) water from the places that have too much to the ones that have too little. I guess if we weren't spending a gazillion dollars in the middle east we could spend a bit more time on our own problems here. Don't mean to start a debate but isn't it about time that we start spending time and money on our own problems???

There has been lots of money spent to move water in the US. For example.

California has spent billions of dollars to bring water in from out of state to it's thirsty population.

The center of the US has the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio river system that moves trillions of cubic yards of water each day. Which the Army Corps of Engineers has spent billions on to control water and water transportation.

Don't forget the TVA project which controls water and power.

The drought in the SE part of the US is probably a short lived event. Normally that area gets plenty of rain. That's not true in California...so they had no choice but to build the aqueducts and reservoirs.

What gets tricky about moving water from state to state is state laws. Most western states have very strict laws on who owns the water and how it is handled.

For instance Colorado has this law about water...

"In the State of Colorado, USA, the installation of rainwater collection barrels is an offense. This is a consequence of the system of water rights in the state; the movement and holding of rainwater is inextricably linked with ownership of water rights and is enshrined in the constitution of the State of Colorado. The use of water in Colorado and other western states is governed by what is known as the prior appropriation doctrine. This system of water allocation controls who uses how much water, the types of uses allowed, and when those waters can be used. This is often referred to as the priority system or "first in time, first in right." Since all water arriving in Colorado has been allocated to "senior water right holders" since the 1850s, rainwater prevented from running downstream may not be available to its rightful owner."

So, if you live in Denver...you can not legally move the rain from your roof to your garden though a rain barrel...let alone pipe it to North Carolinia.

I think there is piping when places become chronically short of water. They don't usually want to spend the money when it's a short term situation. I live in a suburb of Nashville, 1 county east, and when we moved here in the early 80's our utility district went on watering restrictions every year, even when there was plenty of rain.We added pipelines to 3 different water utilities over the next 10 years and even though we are 20 inches short this year and can produce no water on our own, we have no restrictions of any kind on watering. We buy it from people who have plenty.

ATLANTA -- Pike Nursery Holding LLC says it has filed for bankruptcy in federal court because of the region's severe drought and water restrictions.

Officials from the Norcross-based company say normal nursery operations and customer service will continue without being disrupted.

The company has secured $11.75 million in financing to help it operate during bankruptcy.

Pike Nursery chairman and CEO Scott Schnell says the extended drought and resulting water restrictions have had a material detrimental effect on business.

The retailer has 22 locations in Georgia, North Carolina and Alabama.

Thanks for posting that, rc.
I had feared that news about that would be coming.

Sorry you guys are having that kind of trouble Quirky.

Out here droughts are kind of cyclical and so we are a little more used to them. They really have a ripple effect once they get going. It can take a long time for the industries to recover that support yards gardens agriculture.

Hope ya'll bust that drought soon.