Connecticut is a Dry State

I haven’t heard the word “drought’ used much yet this summer although maybe it’s because I wasn’t paying attention to the news while I was away. In my neighborhood the weeds are wilting and the reservoirs are low enough to show about 30 feet of dirt on the sides. But they’re saying "drought" in northern and eastern Connecticut. Here's what the Courant reports:

"We actually had only 53/100ths of an inch of rain for the whole month of August," Young said. "We are very, very concerned." …

Across northern Connecticut, particularly in the east, a dry spell that set in around Aug. 11 has threatened crops and prompted water conservation measures in some towns and at the University of Connecticut.

The northeast part of the state has been particularly hard hit with low stream flow conditions that have left groundwater levels below normal, said Jon Morrison, hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Stream flows began to decline in the middle of August. The region got only a little more than an inch of rain overall, almost 3 inches below normal though not record setting, he said.

At UConn, they’ve switched to paper plates. The daily water savings because of that change? Sixty thousand gallons. (It would be interesting to see what a complete environmental audit would show about paper plates versus plates that were washed and re-used: The cost of producing paper products and transporting them and disposing of then versus the costs of creating durable plates and transporting them and washing them (including heating the water to wash them.)