Covering Drought When One Good Rain Isn’t Enough • On March 26, 2002, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared a stage one drought emergency affecting some nine million area residents. Car washing was banned and severe limits placed on watering lawns and golf courses. • At the end of May 2002, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman declared all 64 counties in Colorado agriculture disaster areas, making farmers eligible for aid in the form of low-interest loans. Drought there is the worst it has been in decades. • In May, Denver reservoirs reached their lowest level since 1982. But even while utilities were calling for water conservation, regional planners were warning that the area’s growing demand for water was rapidly outpacing available long-term supply, according to the Rocky Mountain News. • Because of fire risk, authorities closed the 1.8 million acre Santa Fe National Forest to all hikers and campers for the first time since 1975. Similar warnings and controls were in effect for most of the Southwest and Rocky Mountains. • Because of heavier-than-average precipitation in February 2002, water levels in the Great Lakes, which had been at record lows since 2000, began rising. • In March, hundreds of people in Eastern Kentucky were left home less by what some have called the worst floods in 25 years. May floods in West Virginia caused hundreds of people to evacuate their homes, resulted in several deaths, and cost millions of dollars in damages. Why Cover It? Drought has many serious effects on people’s lives. The costliest weather disaster in U.S. history, in terms of economic damage, was not a hurricane, flood, or tornado. It was the drought of 1988, which caused an estimated $40 billion in losses. Farmers, of course, are often the hardest hit by drought. Crop failers translate into farm auctions and permanent loss of a way of life. Droughts can mean low-water levels that disrupt or halt shipping of key commodities. Droughts can dry up municipal water supplies, leaving homeowners and industries paying higher bills or making do with less. Drought can change the balance of fresh and salt water in estuaries, disrupting ecosystems and severely impacting the catch of com-mercially important seafood species. Story Ideas 1. What is the drought outlook for your particular area or region? Is the outlook affected by a chronically arid climate, cycles such as El Niño/La Niña, or other seasonal weather? How do current drought conditions measure up to historical standards in your region? 2. What industries in your area are most vulnerable to drought? Which agricultural crops or livestock? Which modes of shipping? Which commodities? Which areas are vulnerable to wildfire and which of these contain vulnerable buildings? How about tourism mainstays like rafting, boating, and fishing? 3. How "drought-resistant" are your local municipal and industrial water supplies? How adequate are dams and reservoirs, the placement of water intakes, the depth of wells, water conservation and drought contingency planning? 4. Have zoning and economic development policies in your area adequately addressed potential drought hazards and the natural limits of water resources? 5. If your community or region is dependent on groundwater, is it using that resource faster than it is being recharged? Will it soon be doing so? Are the aquifers being recharged at all? What are the implications for the long-term economic future of your region? 6. How much federal agricultural disaster aid have farmers in your area received because of drought during the past decade? What has been done to reduce the need for it? From a farmer’s perspective, what are the pros and cons of crop insurance? 7. Can you find any "success stories" of farmers or industries that have changed practices to better adapt to drought-prone water supplies? 8. What effects do droughts have locally and regionally on fish and wildlife? Have human changes to the water regime made fish and wildlife more vulnerable to drought? The Drought of 2002 During the spring of 2002, it became clear that two large regions of the United States were facing serious droughts: the Eastern Seaboard from Florida to Maine, and much of the Rocky Mountains and High Plains, stretching from Texas to Montana. Television news featured pictures of forest fires raging in Colorado at a time of year when spring floods would normally occur. Snow pack in Colorado and elsewhere had been below normal during the 2001/02 winter. Montana had seen four successive years of drought, and the effects were cumulative -- thousands of wheat farmers were calling it quits. Parts of the East experienced days of rain during May. That helped some. Flow in some streams approached normal, and soil moisture in many places had farmers smiling. But the drought warnings and restrictions that had been declared in many eastern states and cities remained largely in effect. The simultaneous flash flood watches and drought conditions in parts of Maryland in May underlined some of the paradoxes and enigmas of weather. While sudden rains may quickly increase local stream flows, it takes a lot longer to raise major municipal reservoirs to their full storage capacity -- and longer still for persistent soaking rains to recharge depleted groundwater. Background and Context To some farmers, "the drought" is something that comes regularly each July. "Drought is a normal, recurrent feature of climate, although many erroneously consider it a rare and random event," an analysis by the National Drought Mitigation Center said. News media, geared to re-spond to extreme weather and disaster, sometimes miss that point. Still, bigger droughts make bigger news. The Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, which lasted a decade and ruined tens of millions of acres of farmland, is the benchmark against which others are judged. Yet gov-ernment paleoclimatologists recently reported that much worse "megadroughts" have likely occurred in the past 400 years. Droughts, in fact, have been responsible for the end of numerous civilizations in the course of history. In some ways, such droughts are perfectly natural and are expected in the course of climate variability. But many of those catastrophic megadroughts -- the Dust Bowl is an obvious example -- were, in fact, made worse by human actions such as soil-depleting farm practices. Despite vast improvements in soil conservation practices, a landscape dotted with farm ponds, and an epic system of dams, reser-voirs, and canals built by federal agencies, the United States has still not engineered immunity from drought: droughts cause an average of $6 billion in economic loss each year in the United States. The multi-year drought that culminated in 1988 set a 50-year record for economic loss, drawing down the Mississippi River so low that barge traffic had to stop. More than four million acres were consumed by wildfire that year. Get far into the subject of drought, and you discover many ways of defining a drought and its severity. The many different drought indexes in use reflect this phenomenon: Drought can be lack of snow and rainfall. Or it can low stream flows. Or low soil moisture and low water levels in groundwater storage aquifers. Or insufficient water for crops and vegetation. In the end, we often measure drought by the amount of economic loss to people. Drought indicators found on Web sites below offer many such measures. One of the best is the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which is calculated from both rainfall and temperature and is standardized to local climate. The National Drought Policy Commission identified approximately 47 federal programs that include drought-related relief, primarily for farmers and ranchers, although it did not quantify costs. In its recommendations, the Commission said U.S. policy should "favor preparedness over insurance, insurance over relief, and incentives over regulation." Issues • Are farmers making informed decisions on crop selection, cultivation methods, and water and moisture management to minimize risks of drought-related crop failure? • Should the federal government (taxpayers) subsidize unsustainable agriculture? •What are the limits of "Sustainable" municipal and industrial growth, from a water-resources perspective? Are we exceeding them? Where? • Does efficient water use mean "going without?" Can it also mean "getting more" from available resources? • How has technology made people’s ability to cope with drought better and how has technology made things worse? Key Players • Local/regional offices of Army Corps of Engineers (http://www. usace.army.mil/where.html#State), Bureau of Reclamation (http:// usbr.gov/main/news/index.html), Federal Emergency Management Agency (http://offices.fws.gov/) • Local water utilities (http://www.awwa.org/Links/utility.cfm) and sewerage authorities • Local irrigation district or conservation districts (http://www. nacdnet.org/directory/index.htm, http:www.nacdnet.org/pubaff/ media.htm, and http://www.nacdnet.org/resources/cdsonweb.html) • Drainage and mosquito control districts • Local office of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) and National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). (http://offices.usda. gov/scripts/ndISA.dll/oip_public/USA_map) • County extension agents (http://www.reeusda.gov/) • State water resources agency/agencies (http://www.ctic.purdue.edu/ KYW/wspartners/statewscontacts.html) • Local ports and state transportation agencies. Information Sources • National Drought Mitigation Center. Based at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, this center offers a broad and media-friendly array of information resources related to drought. Partnering with federal agencies, it emphasizes reduction of drought vulnerability by planning rather that reaction to crisis. Co-publishes Drought Monitor (http:/ /www.drought.unl.edu/dm/index.html), a good update on national drought conditions, and also drought impacts in the U.S. (http:// enso.unl.edu/ndmc/impacts/us/usimpact.htm), a great state-by-state summary of drought-related news and disaster declarations. Main phone: (402) 472-6707. Main site: http://enso.unl.edu/ndmc/. Press phone contacts: http://enso.unl.edu/ndmc/media.htm • U.S. Geological Survey. Real-time stream flow conditions map: http:/ /water.usgs.gov/dwc/. Monthly water conditions report: http:// water.usgs.gov/nwc/. General water resources info: http://water.usgs.gov/ General press contact: Butch Kinerney, (703) 648-4732 (bkinerney@ usgs.gov) USGS has lots of drought information in state and regional offices. Check with USGS media relations staff for local contacts in each state. Historical background on drought in Southwestern states: http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/sw/impacts/hydrology/state_fd. • National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Drought Information Center. This Web site (http://www.drought.noaa.gov/) offers a roundup of the wide ranging NOAA resources related to drought. Includes latest national and regional drought updates, indexes, and forecasts and background, agency links, and news releases. Scott Smullen, NOAA Public Affairs, Washington, DC (202) 482-6090, or Curtis Carey, NOAA’s National Weather Service Public Affairs (301) 713-0622. Seasonal U.S. Drought Outlook in map form from NOAA’s Climate Pre-diction Center. (http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/ drought_assessment.html) • USDA National Water and Climate Center. This site, maintained by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, includes information on agriculture’s vulnerability to climate variability like drought, as well as mitigation measures. (http://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/) • Weekly Weather and Crop Bulletin. This USDA weekly, available online, is a good source on effects of drought on crops. Includes state summaries and useful maps. (http://www.usda.gov/agency/oce/waob/ jawf/wwcb.html) •Western Regional Climate Center. One of the six regional climate centers, WRCC maintains a site with an especially rich array of climate and weather information. (http://wrcc.sage.dri.edu/) • National Drought Policy Commission. The Web site includes full text of the May 2000 report of this 15-member commission created by Congress in 1998. (http://www.fsa.usda.gov/drought/)