Editorial: Water Levels Around Country Feast Or Famine

Samuel Taylor Coleridge would have had a difficult challenge when writing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner if he had to describe both the flooding and low water levels around the United States these days. “Water, water…” isn’t everywhere, and the search is on for water to drink. At the same time, parts of the country have been bombarded by rain.

Missouri River navigators faced a shorter season than normal. It ended on October 26, the last day that water was released from main stem reservoirs to support navigation on the lower. Normally the season would have run through the end of November.

According to Larry Cieslik, chief of the Corps of Engineers’ Water Management Office in Omaha, this is the eighth consecutive year of drought for the Missouri River Basin. The navigation season was shortened by 35 days.

Last month was a little better, and runoff for the system was 104 percent of normal. The 2007 calendar year runoff forecast was revised to 21.2 million acre feet (maf.) or 84 percent of normal.

One of the principal benefits of the main stem reservoirs is hydroelectric power. Obviously, during drought times production plummets. In October, for example, the power plants generated 349 million kilowatt hours of electricity, which represents only 42 percent of normal. Total energy production for 2007 is forecast to be 5.0 billion kwh., a record low compared to the average annual generation of 10 billion kwh., the Corps reported.

Naturally, we cannot report all that is going on nationwide during this strange year, but we can touch on some long-term impacts of drought. Water wars are heating up between Alabama and Georgia, some say, and others are beginning to look at the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway as a possible source. These states are witnessing the worst drought conditions recorded in 100 years. Providing drinking water was not part of the original purpose of the Tenn-Tom, and some observers don’t think it will be.

One reason for not tapping the waterway is that the dams on the canal haven’t the capacity to support large lakes that might provide adequate quantities of drinking water, Decatur writer M.J. Ellington tells us. Two Mississippi towns (Tupelo and Columbus) have drawn drinking water from the waterway during the last 10 years. They draw from 20 million to 25 million gallons a day. A few million gallons here and a few million gallons there, and you have a lot of water and no viable source to provide for more needy cities.

Rainfall across the country seems to fit nicely into the “feast or famine” category with residents in some parts of the nation being flooded repeatedly, and southern California having faced a challenging forest fire season and in critical need of rain.

One could look at almost any waterway in the country and say it has experienced drought before; and it would have at some point in time. Our own Missouri River has squeezed down to a relative trickle on some occasions, leaving boats and docks high and dry and the streambed moving along through miles of scorched valleys. During the past few summers some communities in the basin have had to move their water intakes so as to continue drawing drinking water. Reservoirs have never been so low and snowpack in the plains is almost non-existent. USA Today reported, “From its roaring headwaters in the Rocky Mountains to its slow, wide confluence with the Mississippi River, the Missouri is a 2,540-mile ribbon of frontier history, world-class fishing, billions of dollars of commerce and drinking water for millions. But years of sparse snowfall at the river’s source have so reduced its flow that disruptions ripple all the way to the Mississippi.”

Such tales of woe can be repeated around the country to one degree or another. Mother Nature has worked her unwelcome charm, and patience is the only attribute of value. During good years, water is frequently released from various reservoirs to meet needs as they occur. But that is not now the case. Water is scarce. Lake Sakakawea is down 50 feet from its high water mark in 1997. Normalcy won’t come easily, or quickly either. Montana officials say it would require snowfall at 350 percent of normal to mend the damage that has been done by drought. The ground has been so dry in Montana that the water is sponged up by the parched earth before it can reach the river. It has been so dry in the upper Midwest that 60 miles of the Oahe Reservoir in North Dakota have shrunk down to a narrow channel in places where the river was once five miles wide, USA Today reported. Oahe could be down 54 feet from its record level before the end of the year.

Mother Nature’s drought has dried the soil, limited the availability of drinking water, reduced the production of electricity, cut down on tourism, eliminated irrigation and more. The newspaper reported that shipping is down; cooling water for power plants must be lowered in temperature before being returned to the river so as to not cause environmental damage; Indian artifacts inundated by flooding when reservoirs were constructed are now emerging and in danger of becoming targets for looters; and wildlife is endangered.

The old argument still persists up north in the basin that those rascal states that demand water for shipping are the cause of it all. But when the drought goes and the water flows, things will return to normal—for a time.

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