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Anyone that doesnt live in the south east probably hasnt heard much if at all anything about the drought hitting from the Carolina's west to Alabama and north into Tennesse until this past week / weekend when CNN has been talking about it. Much of the talk has been about Atlanta wich has a deficit of 16+ inches and I believe a metro in Alabama has it worse at 24+ inches and other cities in neighboring states ranging from 14 inches and up. The problem though extends beyond these large metro's to the smaller cities and towns and villages wich are not on the larger metro water systems and are instead relying local wells and smaller aquafurs and resevoirs such as the one my town relies on.

Last month Athens / Clarke county set into effect a full outdoor water ban that ofcourse excluded specific businesses such as carwash and construction companies and two local poultry processing plants that each use well over a million gallons of water a day of fresh drinking quality water. The same day that this ban was put into effect ( warning on the first offense, $1,000 fine on the second and increasing after that ) it was released that our local resevoir had a total of 55 days supply left in it and that was three weeks ago.

Two problems are evident, one is with the local poultry processing plants that use so much water and the other is with carwash businesses that have been working in full swing here even though there hasnt been more than 3 days rain in the last month that amounted to more than a drop in the cup for us. There are two other problems one of wich I see portrayed very blatantly at work.

(1) There are those who dont care and are more concerned with a green lawn than wether or not their kids will have drinking water next week or the neighbors kids will. I know that some will say that all you have to do is go to the store and buy bottled water in gallon jugs but keep in mind that much of the south is still historicly poor at or below the national poverty level and a dollar bottle of water at the local gas station is equal in value to that expnsive merlot you bought for dinner last weekend.

(2) Lack of knowledge / education on enviromental issues, this is what I see at work right now as the distribution center I work out of for Wal~Mart is struggling to get people to adhere to a waste disposal program designed to seperate wood, plastic, cardboard, metal, glass and food product so that its not sent to the landfill. The problem here is most people have no idea as to what enviromental damage uncontrolled dumping of trash such as plastic will have and how important it is to recycle.

For my part our family uses the dishwasher more for washing full loads of dishes ( dishwashers use less water than you do when you wash dishes by hand ) we wash full loads of laundry only and we take short showers, our monthly water bill avrages about $16.50 while that of people I work with runs around $50 or more a month.

I'd be interested to hear from others who are in this affected region as to what they are doing to conserve water.