BusinessWeek notes that the South is in hot water about water:
The Southeast is thirsty. Because of a record drought, Atlanta now has 87 days of drinking water left if rain doesn’t fall soon. Raleigh, N.C., has 97 days. Some restaurants in Atlanta aren’t offering drinking water unless asked. Farmers in North Carolina are so low on hay that they’ve begun selling cattle. And dams along the Savannah River have gotten to such low levels this summer they’ve fallen short of generating the hydropower promised to help keep the region’s air conditioners blasting.Most of the blame at the moment is falling squarely on historically low rainfall. But an equally important culprit has been the unbridled growth of the Southeast in the past 50 years. The region’s abundance of cheap water has long fueled development.
The region has moved from abundant cheap water to scarce cheap water — which isn’t quite how things should work:
Still. water remains a consumer’s cheapest utility, with bills averaging $25 per month across the country, and sewage $20, compared with $60 to $100 per month for cell-phone service, notes Francesca McCann, water industry analyst for Houston-based Stanford Group Co. That has created a false sense of the resource as being low in value, she says, and will make it hard to come up with the half-trillion dollars the Environmental Protection Agency estimates will be needed in drinking water and sewage upgrades nationwide over the next 20 years.
I found these stats interesting:
Population growth and water use in the region have both outstripped the national average in recent years. According to data from the U.S. Geological Survey, water consumption in the Southeast grew 15% from 1990 to 2000, compared with 2% nationwide. The population rose by 20%, vs. 13% for the country as a whole, and the South has added 4.4 million people since 2000. Demand from traditionally large water customers, including ranches, mines, and factories, actually declined during that period. But that drop was overshadowed by increasing demand for tap and lawn water.