Drought: A New Norm Across the Nation?
    By Patrick O'Driscoll
    USA Today

    Friday 08 June 2007

Coachella Valley will escape strict conservation efforts, though.

    Drought, a fixture in much of the West for nearly a decade, now covers more than one-third of the continental United States.

    And it's spreading.

    As summer starts, half the nation is either abnormally dry or in outright drought from prolonged lack of rain that could lead to water shortages, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly index of conditions.

    "The only good news about drought is it forces us to pay attention to water management," says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, a think tank in Oakland that stresses efficient water use.

    Gleick says water managers are not reacting forcefully enough to the drought.

    "The time to tell people that we're in the middle of a drought and to institute strong conservation programs is today, not a year from now," Gleick said.

    Coachella Valley residents, though, can breathe a sigh of relief. They will be able to avoid the stringent water conservation measures other California cities are facing.

    "We haven't had that problem down here and probably won't," Coachella Valley Water District Communications Director Dennis Mahr said of rationing.

    The district delivers water to more than 102,000 customers in the central and eastern Coachella Valley as well as Imperial and San Diego counties.

    The desert floor sits atop the Whitewater River Sub-basin, a 39 million acre-foot aquifer. An acre-foot is enough water to supply up to two households for a year.

    Since July 2006, Palm Springs has received just over half an inch of rain, according to the National Weather Service. That's well below the 5 inches the area normally receives by this time, officials said.

    Nevertheless, Mahr said the aquifer could be mined for generations to come without regeneration, if necessary.

    That wasn't believed to be the case three years ago. Officials from the agency then called for a water management plan to reverse an annual "overdraft" that could serve 300,000 households. At the time, Assistant General Manager Mark Beuhler said the valley was "living on borrowed time."

    Some estimates put the available usage for the foreseeable future at 80 years.

    The agency is in the midst of a 35-year plan aimed at curbing overdrafts. The $250 million plan calls for imported water increases, curtailing domestic use by 10 percent by 2010 and agricultural use by 7 percent.

    In other parts of the country, welcome rainfall last weekend from Tropical Storm Barry brought short-term relief to parts of the fire-scorched Southeast. But up to 50 inches of rain is needed to end the drought there, and this is the driest spring in the Southeast since record-keeping began in 1895, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

    Meanwhile, California and Nevada just recorded their driest June-to-May period since 1924, and a lack of rain in the West could make this an especially risky summer for wildfires.

    Coast to coast, the drought's effects are as varied as the landscapes:

    In Central California, ranchers are selling cattle or trucking them out of state as grazing grass dries up. In Southern California's Antelope Valley, rainfall at just 15 percent of normal erased the spring bloom of California poppies.

    In south Florida, Lake Okeechobee fell to a record low of 8.94 feet last week. So much lake bed is dry that 12,000 acres of it caught fire last month.

    In Alabama, shallow ponds on commercial catfish farms are dwindling, and more than half the corn and wheat crops are in poor condition.

    Dry episodes have become so persistent in the West that some scientists and water managers say drought is the "new normal" there.

    Reinforcing that notion are global-warming projections warning of more and deeper dry spells in the Southwest, although a report in last week's Science magazine challenges the climate models and suggests there will be more rainfall worldwide later this century.

    "Droughts will continue to come and go, but higher temperatures are going to produce more water stress," says Kathy Jacobs, head of the Arizona Water Institute, a research partnership of the state's three universities.

    That's because warmer temperatures in the Southwest boost demand for water and cause more of it to evaporate from lakes and reservoirs.

    This drought has been particularly harsh in three regions: the Southwest, the Southeast and northern Minnesota.

    Severe dryness across California and Arizona has spread into 11 other Western states.

    In Los Angeles County, on track for a record dry year with 21 percent of normal rain downtown since last summer, fire officials are threatening to cancel Fourth of July fireworks if conditions worsen. The city of Burbank already has scrubbed its fireworks show.

    The Southeast, unaccustomed to prolonged dry spells, may be suffering the most. In eight states from Mississippi to the Carolinas and down through Florida, lakes are shrinking, crops are withering, well levels are falling and there are new limits on water use.

    Despite the recent storm, water hasn't flowed in Florida's Kissimmee River, which feeds Lake Okeechobee, in 212 days. The district has imposed its strictest water-use limits ever in 13 counties, cutting home watering to once a week and commercial use by 45 percent.

    The drought also has provided an occasional benefit: Okeechobee's record low level allowed crews to clean out decades of muck and debris.