Last week’s rain means the drought’s over. right? Honestly, I was cussing the rain after I found out the sump pump in my tony Fisher Park home wasn’t working. Six inches of water is a lot to pump, and believe me, your next-door neighbor takes notice.
OK, I realize the drought’s not over. The N&R’s Jason Hardin reminds us of that fact:
But no one can say with absolute certainty that winter and spring will bring enough rain to avoid an emergency six months from now. If not for last week’s showers, the year to date would be the driest in recorded history. And that rain was far from enough to break the drought.
The record low rainfall totals for the winter months are less than an inch a month. Break those lows this winter, and the city is in trouble.
Hardin does a pretty good job of reporting Greensboro’s options, yet I missed a couple of major points.
It’s interesting, at least to me, that he failed to mention that Greensboro’s contract to buy water from Reidsville. That’s pertinent, right? But what’s even more interesting is Reidsville isn’t overly worried about the water situation:
Though Reidsville faces the same drought conditions, the city’s construction of Lake Reidsville more than 30 years ago has so far protected it from water restrictions. It also has allowed the city to provide water to Greensboro.
A survey of Lake Reidsville done before the city entered into its contract with Greensboro found that 18 million gallons of water could be drawn from the lake a day without detriment. The lake is about 32 inches below its maximum capacity, said Kelly Almond, Reidsville’s city manager.
The drought of 2001 dropped the lake to a historic low of 58 inches below the spillway. Even at that level, the lake holds about 1.5 billion gallons of water, or 62 percent capacity. Reidsville residents draw about 4 million gallons a day from the lake.
Almond said he would not consider cutting Greensboro back until lake levels approach the historic lows. With winter approaching, he remains optimistic that the situation will not reach that point.
“We are concerned about it, but based on our history and our experience, we don’t have anything to worry about,” he said.
But getting back to the N&R article, Hardin also lets an important question dangle:
Greensboro’s mayoral candidates have said the city needs to begin looking toward water needs for coming decades, even beyond the Randleman dam.
Outgoing Councilman Tom Phillips predicts that Randleman will be the last such project in North Carolina.
OK, so why would Phillips think that? It depends on the point of view. Rep. Mitch Gillespie, who, incidentally, is siding with environmentalists in opposing interbasin transfer from Catawba River, has interesting point of view:
“What the environmentalists don’t realize is the reason why we’re having IBTs is because they’ve worked so hard against dams and reservoirs,” Gillespie said. “They don’t even realize what they’ve done.”
