As twilight falls over this Tennessee town, Mayor Tony Reames drives up a dusty dirt road to the community’s towering water tank and begins his nightly ritual in front of a rusty metal valve.
With a twist of the wrist, he releases the tank’s meager water supply, and suddenly this sleepy town is alive with activity. Washing machines whir, kitchen sinks fill and showers run.
About three hours later, Reames will return and reverse the process, cutting off water to the town’s 145 residents.
The severe drought tightening like a vise across the Southeast has threatened the water supply of cities large and small, sending politicians scrambling for solutions. But Orme, about 40 miles west of Chattanooga and 150 miles northwest of Atlanta, is a town where the worst-case scenario has already come to pass: The water has run out.
But never fear, the snail darters and furbish lousewarts will be protected.
And the Alligators (now in every swimming pool in South Louisiana), Wolves (eating domestic animals as we speak), Mountain Lions and Cougars (causing hikers in Ca. to purchase Mountain Lion Rocks for self-defense, I am not kidding about this), and Black Bears (coming soon to a trash can near you). Surely we’ve got too much time on our hands!
And not to forget — we mustn’t clear out the environmentally friendly underbrush from our forests! That serves as habitat for such things as threatened kangaroo mice, and food sources for spotted owls.
Aren’t the earlier comments non sequiturs? Has some program that would provide water to Orme been cut because of environmental or endangered species protection? I didn’t see a reference to any in the article…
I am not surprised by this article. My parents still live in Tennessee and they have had to go on water rationing for the first time in Tennessee since TVA was started back in the ’30s. They said it has rained once since June at their house. That’s truly shocking…
#4 Good Point. My real point on this article is that the U.S., especially east of the Ms River has consistently been blessed with plentiful supplies of fresh water, which we have consistently abused and mis-managed, often to defend native species which offer relatively little value to the environment. And we paper over our incompetence in minerals/water management by pointing the the species we resurrect and then say we must be doing something right.
Fact is, large supplies of potable water are an oddity in nature, and we should manage and treasure them much more than we do. Water conservation projects are often derailed by their impact on animal wildlife.
On the other hand, areas not subject to frequent drought (like the American east and Appalachian Mountains) see little need to plan for it. Couple poor planning, liberal water use, and exploding populations and its a recipe for shortages. Atlanta is a good example of that.
KTF!…mrb
Orme, TN is just a stone’s throw from Sewanee. Water has been tight for a year now around U of S although many folks have wells, it has cut severely into new construction and services and the grounds & trees show it. It may result in some badly needed water conservation measures long overdue on the Mtn.
Who’s to blame: Bush, Cheney, global warming, the war in Iraq, the war on drugs, the gold standard, the producers of Hello Larry, and of course that UFO spotted over Dennis Kucinich’s back yard.
#4, in a warm dry climate trees and bushes along a watercourse pull out a lot of water and cause it to evaporate. Sure, they shade the creek, but there are probably more bushes than necessary. It has been shown that reducing stands of trees to something like 30 per acre will benefit both trees and underground water. Just try to thin any forest!!!! That may be what Library Jim was getting at.
#4 Jody- They are not total non-sequiturs. In the 1970’s, extensive litigation on behalf of the snail darter delayed & drove up the cost (but ultimately did not stop) the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River. Today, the building of more reservoirs, which are necessary, can be hindered by similar lawsuits.
If you study any watershed in enough detail, you can always find some variety of animal or plant, which you can then proclaim to be a newly-discovered (and endangered!) species. People who just don’t like development for any reason at all, can thus use the courts to stop these dam projects.
Back in my former life, I lived on Orme Mountain, about ten miles above the town of Orme…40 years ago.. and it was a severely depressed area then. There were good wells on the mountain (about 15 miles out of Sewanee) but. like all of the others in the world, the level has dropped over time. We will have to drill 1800′ mol to reach water in our patch of woods (that WILL be thinned as soon as we get built), and THAT aquifer is in serious decline with so many new wells tapping into it, so we plan to use rain catchment exclusively to fill our cisterns for domestic, stock, and garden use.
Back to Orme. The primary industries were the mills in South Pittsburg, the TVA dam construction projects, logging, and cottage distillation at that time and that provided the principal drink back then. Water was short then, and not really very good in the valley where the town is.
Well, now I’m re-thinking my decision to get a job in Eastern Tennessee or Western North Carolina.
The heat of Florida may just be preferable to the drought ‘up there’.
Actually, a lot of us were praying that a very wet tropical storm or hurricane Noel would make landfall and cut across Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, bringing the rain needed so much. Also praying that no damage would be done, either.
#8: “the producers of Hello Larry”
Genius, sir.
Thanks Jim. A lot of us up here in North Georgia are praying the same thing.
thanks kendall for bringing this story to my attention. it gives me new incentive for conserving water on my own property and yes, i do love to protect those ‘worthless species’…there may be species that are worthless to mankind but i do not believe that any of God’s creations are worthless to nature. from what i have observed the worthless gene runs rampant through our species rather than the reverse. what have we given back relative to the healthy function of the earth, rather than just taking for our own shortsighted ends?
Ok everyone who replied, thanks for answering my question, I just wasn’t sure what references were being made since the immediate cause of the shortage is drought. That said, I agree that we should do way more in the realm of water conservation, however, I have to believe that the real problem isn’t so much the number of trees or animals (of a four-legged variety) but an amount of growth and development that both outstrips and doesn’t take into account or support a sustainable infrastructure. Being a native of Asheville, NC I find myself wondering how much development can be sustained every time I visit. It’s been enough to turn this conservative into a fan of strict zoning and limits on development. Not that my opinion matters when placed on balance with a new golf course and housing development.
On a related note, my wife and I stopped by the “Lost Sea” in Sweetwater TN on our way back from our honeymoon last year. I wanted to relive some old childhood memories and I thought she would enjoy the excursion. When we got down to the lake, we found that it was at a much lower level than it had been the last time I visited. The gentleman who took us out on the water explained that the lake is tied into the water table and that the recent years’ lack of rainfall coupled with more housing developments were putting a strain on the water resources. He even suggested it might get so bad that the lake dried up. Who knows…
Jody,
If you think NC is being overdeveloped, pay a visit to South East Florida some time. My dad called last night and said they are building even more condos in the middle of what used to be prime farm land. And most of the ones previously built, as well as several ‘industrial parks’ are standing empty. 🙁
Oh, and one other area of concern:
replacing the native flora and fauna with high maintenance (i.e., water needs) grass sod. So even those new buildings with no occupants need to have the grass watered every day!