I would wait until late Oct or even Nov to move the butterfly bushes. I would guess you can save a bit of water inside the house (I get about a gallon from washing dishes and several gallons from the shower waiting for it to warm up); if you can save that water now, you'll have something to water the bushes after they are transplanted and some new sedum too.

Lantana needs to go in the garage for the winter; it will not make it outside in a pot (usually).

Wouldn't worry about the sedum, unless it is some exotic variety that I don't know about, dug some up this July, while changing an area. My neighbor wanted it and plopped it ON the ground by her mail box, I would be surprised if she watered it, despite this, and nearly full sun, it isblooming, I wouldn't say thriving, but what is this year?

But unlike GA, AZ has a larger supply of water, the colorado river which from what I understand is filled by refreshing pure melting snow and also Coors.
Our water sources are lakes which are now dropping at a faster level. Sending millions of gallons a day to florida to help the endangered oysters doesn't help either.

Unlike GA, Arizona has a river which ends in another country. The end of the Colorado river, I have heard, has completely dried up and it doesn't flow as far anymore as it did. That puts real strain on the water availability in parts of Mexico. Arizona also trucks water in. Read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" - the family used to live in Arizona.

I think Georgia is trying to make sure that water is available to the (at least ) 3 states that get water from the one source.
If they ration water, they should really begin to help people make better use of water we have like grey water usage etc. More along the lines of things happening in California.

GGG

In the next year it might be a really good time to buy a boat in N. GA.! Of course there won't be anywhere to use one.

They really need to look at rationing water use in general but allow some outside water use. If we don't water at least one day a week we will start losing so much vegetation that we will have more environmental issues. Meanwhile there are people who take several showers a day or let their kids play in their over sized bath tubs full of water. you would think they could figure out a reasonable amount for an average home to use and if people use more they should have to pay higher rates and have a time to bring their usage down, then if they still use too much they should have a fine. The schools should be talking to the kids about how to save water, many times the kids educate the parents in these matters.

During a seven-year drought in California, our well-run Mediterranean-climate municipality, which has good reservoirs but also still has most of its water piped in from lands far away (whose farms and orchards dried up long ago as a result, Butterfly), cut all water use by 15% as measured on the water meter attached to each home. Exceed and get a fine that hurt. Keep exceeding and have your water turned off. A workable method for a dry climate that piped in finite amounts of water to be apportioned. Most interestingly, though, the whole city, including miles and miles of homes fronted with lawns, stayed as green as before.

We most of us typically waste a WHOLE LOT of water by spigot, and that's before we ever even consider channeling our roof runoff and contouring our properties to hold rainwater on instead of letting it run off into the sewers, etc.

Butterfly, it's nice that all of the plants you're worrying about don't need or want a lot of water anyway. I'd suggest anybody worried about this issue go for a walk around the garden and neighborhood looking for and listing those plants that appear to be doing fine without supplemental water and then eventually replace most of any lost plants with more of those. It's encouraging how green North Georgia still is at the end of this hellacious summer, even if many nature trees will die.

The book "Rain Gardens" has some good ideas for holding and managing the water that falls into our garden laps. It's definition of rain gardens is a lot more highly developed than the fun but frivolous little planting projects typically shown under this name. The Governor's Mansion some time ago instituted some of the practices discussed and would be worth a tour.

How much train did we get today? I was at the dentist getting tortured and wasn't able to see how much rain hit the area.

The problem for me, as a fairly new home owner, is getting the yard started. Newly planted plants need more water than established ones, and not just for 30 days.

I'm all for total limits, which includes indoor and out. I'd rather ration water inside my house than outside.

My husband and I are down to flushing our toilet once a day. Only 3 loads of laundry a week (we have a front loader that uses less water and run the dishwasher twice a week.

Flushing your toilet once a day??????
How do you do that exactly?!?!

I flush liberally!! On the other hand I only do the laundry about every 10-14 days. Of course it may as well be more frequently since there are more than one load required.

C'mon QQ, you've heard the rhyme: "If it's yellow, let it mellow, If it's brown, flush it down." And if someone works outside the home, they are not using their home toilet as much.

We have strict odor control regulation in this household.

I don't see how even with "brown" you can flush only "once" without stopping up the toilet with paper. :-)

Ewwww, esh! And yellow gets stinky, too. I learned this in my cheap college days. There are toilets out there that you press the button for a light flush and another button for regular flush. Apparently, these have been around for some time abroad. America needs to catch up!

My mom tells me in her area (Athens-Clarke County and surrounding) people are getting in trouble for using grey water. They are told that rain water is supposed to go back to the water table. Here in Gwinnett they are encouraging people to get rain barrels and use grey water. I'm glad I live in a more water wise location. Conserving water is a good idea whether we're in a drought or not, IMO. :)

i live in rural central ga.i have a well.it went dry about 3 weeks ago.it's not extremely deep,but has served fairly adequately for past 12 years.have no $ for digging deeper well.it's rained twice here this summer and then just drizzle.needless to say,i gave up on having lush garden this year.have tried to keep what i could alive. i live on 65 acres of paid for land.been trying to sell some of it,but no one wants to buy dried up property.

I read that Carroll County is selling water to several other counties...even one in Alabama...and other counties are asking to buy their water...
And yet, Carroll County is on a strict 24 hour water ban...
Somehow, that doesn't sound quite fair to me.
I believe in helping your "neighbor"...but I also believe in "helping your own" first.

Gosh, my sympathies, Hdladyblu. We ourselves have only about 2.5 GPM at normal times on ours and are wondering if it might end up running dry. We at least do have county water lines available down at the road for "only" a few grand, though. Which thought just made me realize that with the wrong combination of circumstances even that supply could conceivably fail some day.

I have actually been thinking of looking into one of the rainwater collection systems I've seen advertised online, but don't know anyone who has used one, so don't know how great it would work. Has anyone here tried one? Also, I have been saving water from various run-off times in the house (turning on the faucet and waiting for the water to get hot, etc) and putting it into gallon jugs, to take out to my young trees and/container plantings. Works great and there's been an extra benefit: now, when I remember it's time to water, I don't have to sit there and roll my eyes about having to move the hose around the yard. The water's already there waiting for me!

The Gwinnett environmental center was having some workshops for making rain barrels. The problem with collecting water is you still need an electric pump to have any kind of water pressure. Otherwise it isn't too useful unless you're just doing extremely light watering. Pumps are not terribly expensive but you need a way to collect water, the most common are polyethylene tanks which have become very expensive.

Someone wrote in one of the posts above, "if someone works outside the home, they are not using their home toilet as much." I had been thinking along those same lines myself until I was taking a really nice, long hot shower the other night at my health club and it occurred to me that using all that water at the health club didn't help conserve water in any way at all. It only meant that I wasn't paying for it, personally. If we all wait until we go to work, or the library, or Home Depot, to go to the bathroom, so that we won't have to flush our home toilets, how does that save any water at all? We're still using SOMEONE'S water to flush the toilet.

And I've also been wondering about the same thing someone wrote they are talking about in Athens-Clarke County. If we really get serious about water use here in Atlanta, and water is rationed to the point where most people start saving every drop that falls off their roofs to use in the garden or even in the house (to flush the toilets, maybe?) WON'T there eventually be a backlash whereby ground water isn't replenished when it rains? After all, that rainwater is naturally meant to go back into the earth and into the water table. I guess maybe the question I'd like to have answered is, how much water do we actually USE UP when we use it?

I always feel that when I water my outdoor plants, as long as I'm not drowning them with water they don't need, I'm actually helping the environment by keeping trees alive and keeping a healthy cover of plant growth on the earth's surface. (Remember the dust bowl?) I feel that the focus of water conservation should not be so much on individual people who are watering outdoor plants, but on other uses of water that may be unnecessary or even damaging to our environment. Chicken processing plants come immediately to mind because I know they use massive amounts of water and also pollute the water system. Car washes also seem wasteful to me because, after all, why do we even need clean cars? Who cares? And besides, they dump all those nasty cleaning surfactants on our earth.

Speaking of cars, maybe if we disallowed SUVs or narrowed our highways or outlawed single-occupant vehicle travel or even simply increased the opportunities for public transportation to a meaningful level, we could change the unnatural microclimate of heat and bad air that hangs over metro Atlanta like an umbrella and keeps rain from falling here. It's scientifically measurable and visible; I know some people will probably call me a nut but I think it's been proved now that the huge quantity of car exhaust in Atlanta's air is changing our weather patterns and even sometimes keeping rain from falling. The rain clouds move our way, then seem to smell the exhaust and either dissipate, float high above us, or go in another direction. Let's be honest about this, folks. Our environmental problems are not confined to a shortage of water. Not by a longshot.

It is scary that the water scare is getting to this point. Westender, you're absolutely right about using toilets and showers outside of the home. It makes absolutely no difference with respect to water conservancy.

With respect to folks collecting every drop of grey water and rainwater though, most people who are collecting that water are doing so in order to water their gardens/lawns etc.. so that water is going back into the water table anyway. It may be delayed a few days or a week from when it's collected but it's still being returned.

Every state has to decide for itself what types of conservancy measures, etc... it wants to employ. I agree reducing the pollution would be highly beneficial to our current situation. SUVs are big polluters compared to some of the more fuel-efficient vehicles being made now. Alot of people are switching and will continue to do so as the technology drops in price. That's probably one thing that the market will fix itself in time. Narrowing our highways I think would only serve to increase vehicle congestion resulting in more traffic jams resulting in more cars sitting and idling longer on our roads resulting in more pollution. Outlawing single-occupant vehicle travel also is probably not going to work too well and would cause major hardship on alot of people. There are more ways though that they can continue to encourage more carpooling & public transportation and those would be good things especially inside major city limits. I live in a rural area, no friends around and no close neighbors. My husband is disabled so I must do all of the errand running, grocery buying, etc.. myself. Everyone's situation is different but I don't think outlawing single-occupant driving would be practical and would be VERY difficult to enforce too.

Being less wasteful is a great place to start. I heard on the news they were asking restaurants not to serve those complimentary glasses of water they always bring you before you order. Only serve them if customers ask for them. This is something that would have NEVER even occurred to me. Most of the time customers don't even drink that water and instead order a coke or something. Plus that's extra glasses that must be washed after they clean your table. There are lots of ideas like this that could help with the situation and wouldn't necessarily cause hardships to anyone.

Sincerely, Danielle J.

The comment about not being home was to address QQ's comment:

Flushing your toilet once a day?????? How do you do that exactly?!?!

It had nothing to do with the total amount of water anyone person uses in a day, just how could it be that someone could flush their home toilet only once a day.

I had the same concern about people capturing water off their roof - in my case it would deprive my trees of water because the gutter water goes right into the yard . People in urban areas that capture water from the roof keep water from reaching the water system and replenishing it (eventually). While capturing water is good for the individual, it is not a perfect solution.

Some good ideas here about changing behaviors. I wash my car perhaps twice a year. It's silver, who can tell if it's dirty and who the heck cares? I know car wash places recycle water, but plenty of it is getting used up in the process as well. We don't need clean cars. We need water. And I remember years ago, during another drought, where you had to ask for water at a restaurant.

It's simple. You use the toilet, put the lid down, don't use a lot of toilet paper...

Haven't any of you ever stayed at a lake house or a summer home with no sewer system:)

Our water is being extremely mismanaged. There are some big time politics that are at the root of the matter. All you have to do is watch just the first 5 minutes of the news and every day there is another rediculous mistake being revealed.

Yes, let's not forget the 22 BILLION gallons that was 'mistakenly' let our earlier this year.

Where is that rain, I thought it was coming last night.....

What is really galling to me about all of this is that they are permitting power plants which use IMMENSE amounts of water which never makes it back into the rivers or acquifers. I think it is Plant Vogtle that is permitting two new reactors. The one they have now, I read, uses as much water as three medium sized cities...most of which evaporates. There is a new coal fired plant being permitted on the Chattahoochee which will also use huge amounts of water.

It seems awfully inconsistent if not downright dishonest for the Governor to raise hell about the endangered species act, cross basin transfers and water rights for other states when they are seemingly going out of their way to push the overdevelopment of North Georgia. This seems like the perfect opportunity to push development elsewhere and put solar panels on everyone's roofs. This drought may be a godsend if it can show voters the disadvantages of a virtually unregulated, corporate sponsored government.

Sorry, I screwed that up. I read that Plant Vogtle's existing nuclear reactor uses as much water as the City of Savannah. The proposed new ones would use the equivalent of three mediums sized cities worth of water (Macon, Albany, etc.).

The power plants claim to be only "brief custodians" of the water, using to cool engines and whatnot then releasing it back into the river. Don't know what the real story is but that's what they're saying.

I'm not sure about coal fired plants, but that is definitely untrue of nuclear ones. That is, after all, what those huge cooling towers are all about.

I simply cannot believe that we are reduced to talking about flushing toilets only occasionally and gutting laws which protect endangered species when the billions of gallons that would be used by proposed Power plants statewide get virtually no mention. Especially insofar as we, the taxpayers and customers, are going to be underwriting their construction and insurance. It seems like there are far better ways to maximize our water and fiscal resources than building more power plants to spur yet more urban sprawl in north Georgia. I would be willing to bet that there is a lot of South Georgia or Alabama that would love to have some attention paid to them for once.

Haven't you heard, it's OK to flush and flush frequently. For the more you flush, the more wastewater can be treated and released back into lake lanier.
And recycled.

Ewww.

I do know about power plants, nuclear and coal. The primary use of water is to cool steam to release the energy to drive the turbines and make electricity. Most of this cooling water is returned to the river or lake 3-5 degrees warmer than it went in. No water is lost in this cooling. To limit the temperature rise in the main water to 3-4 degrees, some water is sent to the cooling towers where it is sprayed to encourage evaporation and cooling. The evaporated water is what you see as the cloud coming off the cooling towers. Only the water that is evaporated in the cloud is "used up" and not returned to the lake or river. The water used to make the clouds is small in comparison to other users.