Severe Drought Drying Up The Southeast

A couple of weeks ago, I flew to Atlanta on business and hung out with a friend of mine while I was down there. Among other topics (e.g. Bush sucks, Congress sucks, etc), she brought up how bad the drought has been down there. Right now, restrictions are voluntary, but mandatory restrictions could be just around the corner, which would affect regular water usage in the home.

Without any significant rainfall, Lake Lanier, the city's reservoir, is down to a level that would provide the local residents only 100-200 days' worth of water. Mickey Mellen, who runs Atlanta Water Shortage, has been doing an amazing job at tracking this situation, even to the point of showing daily reservoir levels and rainfall amounts. While Atlanta still has a little time left, a small town in Tennessee has already gone completely dry.

The mighty waterfall that fed the mountain hamlet has been reduced to a trickle, and now the creek running through the center of town is dry.

Three days a week, the volunteer fire chief hops in a 1961 fire truck at 5:30 a.m. - before the school bus blocks the narrow road - and drives a few miles to an Alabama fire hydrant. He meets with another truck from nearby New Hope, Ala. The two drivers make about a dozen runs back and forth, hauling about 20,000 gallons of water from the hydrant to Orme's tank. [...]

"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."

Scary thought, indeed. If there are any Shakers in the Atlanta area, please comment on any updates that you know.