Waterless West

The continued drought brings on new, dry

Welcome rains came to parts of the Midwest and South last week, soaking parched reservoirs, saving some thirsty crops and providing water for swimming pools and lawn sprinklers --but no such fortune befell the West and Southwest. There drought stubbornly persisted like a biblical plague, withering corn and wheat, drying up horse and cattle water holes, kindling brush and forest fires (including some 400 in California), and cutting back on water and energy supplies for about 30 million Americans.

Already the obstinate drought has wrought profound changes in the lives of residents of the still-seared areas. The cost to Colorado's agricultural industry has risen to more than $300 million, and many towns have introduced water rationing. Denver officials have rigidly restricted lawn watering to three hours every third day by threatening violators with fines. Water consumption in June and July dropped 28% from a prior five-year average for the same period. Typically, Denver Lawyer Tim Segar says he and his wife spurn dinner parties because it is their sprinkler night: "Friends also can't come over to our house, because they have to stay home and water." Similar restrictions are in force in a few towns in Oregon and Washington.

Mandatory rationing now affects 68 California cities and towns, including Los Angeles. Backed up by voluntary measures, consumption fell 23% in L.A. alone in July. Some homeowners are installing waterless toilets, which use a mineral-oil base that is constantly recycled and filtered through a 500-gal. waste tank under the house; every year a truck pumps out the refuse. Others have attached fiberglass tanks full of compressed air to cut down on the number of gallons of water required to flush a toilet. People are also affixing gadgets to their showers and faucets to decrease the flow. Many California families are voluntarily bathing in six gallons of water or less, then using it to water plants or wipe off dirty windows. Some are changing sheets only once every ten days to reduce the need for laundry water. A few zealots are giving up ice cubes in their drinks to save on water and on the electricity used to manufacture ice. The wife of one Department of Agriculture specialist even uses the water in her hot-water bottle to wash her hands and clean the family poodle.

Though the dry spell has made two out of every three Western communities eligible for federal emergency drought funds, it has barely hurt California agriculture (except for wheat and cattle farms), which uses up to 85% of the water in the nation's leading agricultural state. This year's farm output is expected to be normal--around $8.9 billion--despite a second straight year of drought.

California has long employed all manner of drought technology, which enables its farms to flourish. It has built a strong $10 billion system of dams, canals, reservoirs and other tributaries. More important, it has pioneered in new agritech-nologies that carefully ration water. Many California farms use irrigation-scheduling programs, which parcel out the least amount of water necessary to produce optimum yields. So-called SWAP technicians, who rely on computers to analyze soil, water, atmosphere and plant conditions weekly or semiweekly, can tell a farmer how much moisture to use for up to 60 days.

California farmers also benefit from an expanding network of water-reclamation plants, including the world's largest, in Orange County, which processes 15 million gal. of waste water daily at 50% less cost and with 50% less energy use than old systems. Some cities have built plants to reclaim waste water for irrigation. Farmers have wider access to wells drilled two to three times deeper than normal--as far down as 3,000 ft.--by radical new equipment that uses larger bits, more powerful engines and TV monitoring. In addition, they can call on emergency cloud-seeding planes.

While these technologies beat praying for rain, they may not be enough to save the crops if the drought continues another year. Says Chuck Shoemaker of the California water department: "It's a little like rolling dice or cutting cards. The odds were very long against having two years in a row like this. They're just the same against three years."

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