By Linda Childs

On October 3, following two months of statewide drought, Governor Jodi Rell issued a Connecticut Drought Advisory. Noting that rainfall had been 35 percent below normal, the Governor urged residents to cut down on water usage, and ordered state agencies to do so.

Although Norfolk had considerable mitigating rain before August and since September, the advisory is still in effect. Russell Russ says that Norfolk is experiencing “the third driest year since 1932.” At least one Norfolk family has seen their well dry up. What’s going on here?
According to the National Drought Mitigation Center website, “drought is a normal, recurrent feature of climate (which) occurs almost everywhere…depending on differences in regions, needs and disciplinary perspectives. It originates from a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time, resulting in a water shortage for some activity, group or environmental sector.”

The current drought is most severe in the Southeast. When my husband and I moved back east from the wet green wilds of the Pacific Northwest, we were unprepared for the drought awaiting us in Virginia. Within a year of our return it had become chronic; and by the summer of 2003, mandatory water restrictions were imposed in Albemarle County, Virginia. In the City of Charlottesville, restaurants used paper plates and served water only if requested. Car washes closed unless they were able to recycle water used, and both cars and lawns grew dusty. We collected precious and infrequent runoff from the roof in rain barrels, shared brief showers and watered our desiccated garden with grey water. The Water Authority bemoaned falling reservoir levels combined with rising population. Although more rain and snow have fallen in the years since, bringing temporary respite to central Virginia, drought conditions just a bit further south grow dire. As I write this on November 12, the Governor of Georgia is holding a prayer meeting in Atlanta (and causing a minor ruckus about church/state separation!) as he appeals for Divine intervention in the intense ever-deepening drought again plaguing the Southeast. Forty miles from Chattanooga, Tennessee, the town of Orme has resorted to trucking water in from Alabama and turning on the municipal taps for just three hours a day.
In Norfolk, residents dependent on groundwater levels to supply their wells have seen their water supply diminish. Ed Machowski’s springhouse has recovered to only ½ capacity since totally drying up this summer. Residents of Norfolk on Town water have been minimally impacted by the drought (although I hauled plenty of water to my garden in August and September and my water bill will reflect it). The water levels in Tobey Pond, Doolittle Lake and West Hill Pond have dropped, but I have learned that a lake’s falling water levels are secondary to evaporation rates and not so unusual at summer’s end. Lake Wangum has remained as full as ever, so residents on Town water have not needed to worry about their drinking water supply.

On the whole, then, our experience of drought in Norfolk is far less severe than that of the rest of the state. Town officials in Greenwich, Bristol, Sharon and other towns have imposed emergency water conservation rules. Along with diminished rainfall, the plague of population growth may be a crucial tipping point in Connecticut’s more populous regions, as it most definitely is in the Southeast. It is a “regional difference” that draws many of us to Norfolk and makes our quality of life enviable.

But what about the other “environmental sectors?” According to the Governor, the Housatonic and Naugetuck rivers are flowing at “seriously low levels.” Ed Machowski, a wildlife biologist with the D.E.P. Inland Fisheries Division, has witnessed the drying up of annual streams in which trout and brood salmon are normally stocked. He says that “it has been a really tough year for the fish” and that the long-term precipitation average, which may reach a normal level annually, can be deceptive. The bountiful rains of April led to a profusion of plant growth; as the season progressed and the summer grew progressively drier, the flora continued to suck up ground water and annual streams dried up and became seasonal. While we humans had a long, warm beautiful autumn, fish were stranded in shallow pools of water in rivers all over the state. The resultant die-off in fall-spawning fish is likely to negatively impact next year’s stream hatch. As a result, Machowski says that the real long-term effect on our trout and salmon population will not be fully apparent until 2008.
The good news for Connecticut’s fish, and all of us, according to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s November 2007 – January 2008 forecast, is an improvement in drought conditions and an easing of environmental impacts. We and they are certainly better off than most of the southern tier of the country, where N.O.A.A. predicts ongoing drought persisting and intensifying and affecting more area.