Please God, send rain!!
I do have front yard irrigation... and we do water when it is legal to, but one of my distant neighbors saw me hand watering in my newly planted roses during the evening.. which is allowed for 30 days, but she called the watering police on me and they've been coming up my street twice a day some days trying to bust me for illegal watering. It's so sad.... I wave and smile at them as I do all passerby's when I can. :) I know it was her in particular, as she strains her neck to see into my back yard when she drives by to see if I'm holding the hose and watering back there..... where I have newly planted stuff as well.. and she doesn't know the difference. I can see her do it from my kitchen window. I just wish it would rain! We are seriously looking at getting a well installed here and we wont be under the same outdoor watering restrictions. Have already had a company out. I don't know what I'd do in a total ban. I have bunches of new roses this year. Some parts of the state are down to one day a week.. and it could go to a total ban if it doesn't rain soon. I'm very concerned.
Here's today's AJC front page newspaper article:
Water usage rules tighten
Atlanta bans outdoor use during the week
By STACY SHELTON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/25/07
With Georgia falling deeper into what could be a long drought, the city of Atlanta on Thursday banned lawn sprinkling and other outdoor watering during the week. The entire state is likely to soon follow.
In Atlanta, Sandy Springs and most of south Fulton, home and business owners are now prohibited from turning on their garden hoses from Monday to Friday. They can water only on Saturday or Sunday from midnight to 10 a.m., depending on their street address.
The Atlanta City Council is considering an ordinance to impose fines for homeowners for off-schedule watering. After one written warning, the fines would be $250 for the second violation, $500 for the third violation and $1,000 for subsequent violations. Ultimately, the city could shut off water service to a habitual violator.
Janet Ward, a spokeswoman for the city of Atlanta's Department of Watershed Management, said the decision to tighten watering restrictions was pre-emptive. There's enough water flowing past the pipe that withdraws water from the Chattahoochee, she said, but a storage tank in south Fulton — an area served by city water — has been running low.
"This is something we're doing to get ahead of things," Ward said. "It's because of growth in south Fulton, and because of the drought."
The director of the state Environmental Protection Division, Carol Couch, is mulling the same restrictions. The state is currently in a Level Two drought. If Couch decides to move to a Level Three drought, the watering restrictions would mirror Atlanta's.
A Level Four drought would trigger a total ban on outdoor water use.
EPD Assistant Director Jim Ussry said "we shouldn't be seeing this type of [dry] situation this early in the year. ... It's a serious situation. The outlook is for more dry weather."
It hasn't rained in Atlanta since May 16, and it's two weeks since it has rained more than a half-inch. May's dry spell follows the second-driest January-to-April period since 1930.
The first rain forecast by the National Weather Service won't come until Tuesday, when the chance is a disheartening 20 percent.
The dry weather is "nice weather for playing outside, but I'm starting to worry about the long term," said Mark Landers, a Georgia-based hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "It will take a sustained, higher-than-average rainfall to begin to return to normal."
Georgia is in the center of a severe drought that extends into Alabama, North Florida and parts of North Carolina, according to USGS data. For weeks, streams across the state, including Atlanta's Peachtree Creek and Alpharetta's Big Creek, have been running at or near record low levels. Both creeks feed into the Chattahoochee River, the primary water source for millions of metro Atlantans.
Lake Lanier, the federal reservoir that controls how much water flows down the Chattahoochee, is lower than normal and expected to continue dropping. With the river already straining to meet the demands of metro Atlanta's growth, and Florida and Alabama demanding more downstream, these are the conditions that give credence to the saying attributed to Mark Twain: "Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over."
But at least metro Atlanta has the 38,000-acre lake. The EPD's Ussery said state officials are keeping a close eye on some small water systems around the state that are completely dependent on small rivers or reservoirs, including west Georgia's Heard County. They're the most vulnerable to a possible water shortage, he said.
The state adopted a year-round outdoor watering schedule four years ago, but few people seemed to be aware of it. And few cities and counties enforced it. The idea of the permanent, three-day-a-week schedule was to get people ready for droughts like this one, so they would already be used to looking at the calendar before turning on their sprinklers.
Now that the state is firmly in the grip of another drought, word is finally getting out.
Shirley Adair, who lives on Palifox Street in Atlanta's Lake Claire neighborhood, stood in her dirt yard watering hydrangeas and other plants Thursday afternoon, using water she'd collected in her shower with a 5-gallon plastic bucket. Because of the drought, she decided not to plant grass when she landscaped in March.
She's prepared to wait until at least the fall for a pretty green lawn.
"My vanity doesn't bother me," said Adair, who grew up on a farm. "If we can't have water to drink, I could sacrifice that."
State rules, and Atlanta's, exempt personal food gardens and businesses that depend on water, including carwashes, plant nurseries and landscapers. Newly installed landscapes get a 30-day pass to get established.
In Sandy Springs, Jerry Lessner had just heard about the restrictions on the radio as she returned home from work Thursday afternoon.
"It's going to kill everything that's here, that's for sure," she said, looking out on the well-manicured lawn. "But, by the same token, until we get rain, we don't have any recourse."
The worry on Lessner's mind: "The money needed to replace [the landscape]," which will inevitably die without water.
So, you can be sure, she added, when Saturday arrives, she'll be giving the yard, "a good soaking."
Staff writers Cynthia Daniels and David Bennett contributed to this article.
