Posted on 11/01/2007 4:19:50 PM PDT by blam
Tennessee Town Has Run Out of Water
Published: 11/1/07, 6:46 PM EDT
By GREG BLUESTEIN
ORME, Tenn. (AP) - As twilight falls over this Tennessee town, Mayor Tony Reames drives up a dusty dirt road to the community's towering water tank and begins his nightly ritual in front of a rusty metal valve.
With a twist of the wrist, he releases the tank's meager water supply, and suddenly this sleepy town is alive with activity. Washing machines whir, kitchen sinks fill and showers run.
About three hours later, Reames will return and reverse the process, cutting off water to the town's 145 residents.
The severe drought tightening like a vise across the Southeast has threatened the water supply of cities large and small, sending politicians scrambling for solutions. But Orme, about 40 miles west of Chattanooga and 150 miles northwest of Atlanta, is a town where the worst-case scenario has already come to pass: The water has run out.
The mighty waterfall that fed the mountain hamlet has been reduced to a trickle, and now the creek running through the center of town is dry.
Three days a week, the volunteer fire chief hops in a 1961 fire truck at 5:30 a.m. - before the school bus blocks the narrow road - and drives a few miles to an Alabama fire hydrant. He meets with another truck from nearby New Hope, Ala. The two drivers make about a dozen runs back and forth, hauling about 20,000 gallons of water from the hydrant to Orme's tank.
"I'm not God. I can't make it rain. But I'll get you the water I can get you," Reames tells residents.
Between 6 and 9 every evening, the town scurries. Residents rush home from their jobs at the carpet factories outside town to turn on washing machines. Mothers start cooking supper. Fathers fill up water jugs. Kids line up to take showers.
"You never get used to it," says Cheryl Evans, a 55-year-old who has lived in town all her life. "When you're used to having water and you ain't got it, it's strange. I can't tell you how many times I've turned on the faucet before remembering the water's been cut."
"You have to be in a rush," she says. "At 6 p.m., I start my supper, turn on my washer, fill all my water jugs, take my shower."
During its peak in the 1930s, Orme (rhymes with "storm") boasted a population of thousands, a jail, three schools and a hotel. But those boom times are long gone.
After the coal miners went on strike in the 1940s, the company shut down the mine and the town has never been the same. Not a single business is left in Orme. The only reminder of the town's glory days is an aging wooden rail depot that sits three feet above the eerily quiet streets.
Although changes are coming - cable TV arrived just a few years ago - cell phones still don't work there. The main road into town is barely wide enough for two cars to pass one another. Dogs wander the streets, farm animals can be heard all around town, and kids gather outside the one-room City Hall to ride their bikes.
"It's like walking back in time. It's Never-Never Land here," says Ernie Dawson, a 47-year-old gospel singer who grew up in Orme.
Water restrictions in Orme are nothing new. But residents say it's never been this bad.
Even last summer, as the water supply dwindled, city leaders cut off water only at night. But in August, Reames took the most extreme step yet and restricted use to three hours a day.
Elected in December, he has now spent $8,000 of the city's $13,000 annual budget to deal with the crisis. Most of the money went toward trucking water from Alabama.
He has tried to fill the gaps with modest fundraisers, but it hasn't been easy. A Halloween carnival last week cleared about $375 and a dog show two weeks ago made $300.
The town has received a $377,590 emergency grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that Reames hopes will be Orme's salvation. A utility crew is laying a 2 1/2-mile pipe to connect Orme to the Bridgeport, Ala., water supply. The work could be finished by Thanksgiving.
"It's not a short-term solution," Reames says. "It is THE solution."
He says the crisis in Orme could serve as a warning to other communities to conserve water before it's too late.
"I feel for the folks in Atlanta," he says, his gravelly voice barely rising above the sound of rushing water from the town's tank. "We can survive. We're 145 people. You've got 4.5 million people down there. What are they going to do? It's a scary thought."
Perhaps the cultural mass insanity of American lawns will finally head into the dustbins of history.
YES!!! I hope you are right....I hate lawns!
Is there a reason they don’t know how to drill a well?
Yeah I heard about that. We are in major need of rain here in Tennessee. The whole southeast is actually. We only had to mow the yard 2 times this season. The grass is dead. I think I also heard Atlanta is almost out of water too.
You forgot: Bush to Blame, Women and Minorities Intentionally Hit Hardest
Atlanta won't fall into the sea, but it ain't getting any water from the ground either.
Maybe the well water’s not potable. My in-laws have lots of well water. All of it brown.
The amount of time and money spent on them is really ludicrous. The mass insanity has reached a point that in many municipalities it’s a legal requirement to maintain one of these monstrosities, and practically all homeowner associations mandate them.
I’ve got ivy covering the ground around my house, and lots of trees. It looks lovely, requires close to zero maintenance, absolutely zero watering, and attracts a nice array of wildlife.
I hope the Bush administration is showing some interest in the situation and Chertoff is getting off his butt to try to find some way to address the problem. Talk about the Katrina catastrophe! I think this could dwarf that disaster and just about put a fork in the Bush administration and the Republican party in the South.
All the media attention is being paid to the Santa Ana winds and the burning up of pricey California real estate. Who cares? I’m more concerned about people in your neighborhood running out of drinking water. Where are millions of people going to go if the taps go completely dry? Water buffalos and trucks hauling bottled water aren’t a solution. People drilling wells in their backyards aren’t a solution. I don’t see anyone on a national level addressing this. Somebody better get moving and soon.
If you don’t get good water you just drill deeper to the next water-table.
I Gore invented it, it is his fault!
This is ridiculous....we’ve got lots of sea water...where are the plants to make it drinkable water? For anyone in this country to run out of water...is outrageous...
How deep is your in-laws well?
We have pipelines for shipping oil all over the country. How about something for water? (I have dibs on the idea - okay?)
Is this because of La Nina?
Cheney and Haliburton have the only desalinator and they ain’t renting it cheap.
In case you missed it, the town received a grant to build a pipeline to a community with water.
Droughts end. In time, there won’t be water problems.
This town is clearly a dysfunctional community that might be better off becoming a ghost town. It has no businesses and no resources to improve itself.
A bigger issue is how conservatives are now running off to the the nanny state every time something bad happens. The Federal government should not be in the business of fixing things whenever there is a natural disaster.
If conservatives want the government to give out “free” money, then there is no difference between liberals and conservatives.
Yeah I live in White House Tn, and our water tower is empty and we now get water from Gallatin which is a half hour away from me. They are low too. We are 17 inches below normal right now and lakes and streams are drying up. I leave a small sand box full of water for the critters that i am sure are having a hard time finding water. The tap water tastes earthy too. like we are drinking from the bottom of the barrel. I am very concerned about this.
Thanks for that map. Am in central NC - were under exceptional drought conditions til million dollar rain last week put us in “extreme” drought conditions. My heart goes out to the people in W. NC and Tenn and GA and N. Ala who need rain desperately.
The good news for last 2 years - no bad hurricanes came through Southeast - The bad news - no bad hurricanes came through the Southeast.....leading to this drought.
Now the hurricane season is over and our next good chance for major rains won’t be til next hurricane season....do not wish hurricanes on anybody but sometimes it brings the rainfall we need so badly in S. East.
My lawn was dead too but the wonderful rains last week have brought out the green look in it again....but we are still about six inches below normal.
That darn Cheney is so dastardly.
Not good to hear Lake Lanier is in bad shape = but really not surprised from that map.
It is a critical situation and, I agree, time for prayer!!!!
You are correct. We have dry winters too. Not much snow either. I know we have water for several more months but dayum we live where there is severe storms, flash flooding, tornadoes and such, as the norm. The rain won’t come till the spring. I have never ever seen it so dry.
I’m not an alarmist, but the drought we experienced this year in SWOH was worse than anything I’ve ever seen. It was unreal.
“Golly, too bad we can’t figure out a way to take the salt out of ocean water. Guess we all gonna die.”
Let us know when you figure out how to move Tennessee closer to the ocean or to move ocean water there without spending humongous amounts of cash. You’ll get rich.
“We have pipelines for shipping oil all over the country. How about something for water? (I have dibs on the idea - okay?)”
It would cost a mint. Can you pony up the cash? Or maybe raise taxes since water is usually a municipal matter?
It’s pretty hysterical to watch folks on this thread suggesting that all you need to do is grow ivy or bring water from the ocean. Or it would be hysterical if the drought problem weren’t so real.
Maybe all the posters who think this is no problem should move to a drought area. I’m sure they could do better.
My question is are private citizens being made aware of the situation in these areas - as the fires were publicized....and I think American citizens would chip in and send water in whatever form to the most critical towns. Water trucks, bottled water. But that all is only short term help and not a solution... Then we could pray for God to send that storm out in the Atlantic....over into the Southeastern states........ It's a real nightmare in a lot of places and getting worse by the day.....and, by the way, one of the things local municipality government has always seemed to do relatively well is see to it that we had clean, available water for our towns and cities......one of the things local governments do fairly well. I do not want to see the Feds and the States assume power over all the municipal water resources....which some might be tempted to do in this crisis. But, surely, these "officials" should be paying attention just as they would pay attention if we were having wildfires or hurricanes. Locally here .....it has appeared to be benign neglect from a lot of "officials" (all Dems Gov and City of Raliegh).....until things started to finally get really critical. They were saved by the wonderful rain we got last week - for now.
Seems to me people who rely on the government for their water ought to be raising hell that this has NOT been done.
Ah, I see. And, so, it's up to Washington to fix droughts, too, now. Maybe Cheney could do a rain dance. Will that be enough?
So I take it the rain that hit western TN and KY last week didn’t do much for you there?
The Liberals won't let them.
Didn’t you finally get a boatload of rain last week?
Good graphic. Compared with map from the site two weeks ago it looks like the extreme drought has narrowed. Nashville was in the extreme categroy - now it has moved out. Four solid days of steady rain did help.
It helped but we need rain so bad, it was hardly effective.... I was thankful though...lol... We need 17 plus inches
Who is going to pay to pump water 700 miles uphill for 145 people?
We had from 2-7 inches in Maryland. Right up I-95 was the heaviest rain oddly...about a 20 mile swath with over 5”. Further east and west it was around 2.5” or so.
what we need here is the kind of rain that we just had....it was a long soaking rain, we just need more. I was hoping that tropical storm would come thru here....I guess it is going to go north though.
God Bless You.
lol I have raccoon visitors...I love them...they come every night..
Here in Iowa we have plenty of water and it is cheap too. I have no water meter and can use all I want for about $40 a month.
Maybe if some of those southerners would move up here we could get a conservative Republican governor elected!
Your Democrat Party at work!
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