Upper James Region Drought Downgraded to a Watch, but Ground Water Remains at Emergency

Nick Mullins:
It’s been a dry spring and summer and many people are glad to see additional precipitation over the last month or so, help to alleviate drought conditions. Counties in the Upper James evaluation region, that include Highland, Bath, Allegheny, Rockbridge, Craig, and Bottetourt counties were recently downgraded from a drought warning status to a watch citing trends in precipitation along with increases in lake levels and river flows. But as we continue deeper into the fall months and the drought subsides, we aren’t entirely out of the woods yet. Ground water levels are still listed at emergency levels.

AMR news was able to speak with Weedon Cloe, Water Supply manager with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality who explains more about the important work of Virginia’s Drought Monitor Task Force and it’s reporting.

Weedon Cloe:
The drought monitoring task force is made up of state and federal agency representatives whose sole purposes to evaluate drought in Virginia. Our drought evaluations are advisories that are issued and the status that we have in the area are independent of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s drought programs. We have 13 drought evaluation regions and we look at four different indicators within each of those regions.

We look at precipitation, we look at reservoir levels, we look at groundwater levels, and we look at stream flow. Up in the upper James, we’ve had that in warning for quite some time. But we noticed after the rains came through not too long ago, we were able to collectively make a decision to move that to a drought watch. We did that based on the reservoir, which is Lake Moomaw, the flow of the streams up there, which is Cowpasture River, and really the only thing that was really bad and it’s still holding an emergency at the groundwater level.

Even though we’re at a watch, that is something that folks should be aware of. Watches and warnings carry the same weight in terms of conservation measures—they’re voluntary. The only time we ever have mandatory restrictions mandated by the state is when it becomes an emergency. I would just still, even though we moved to a watch condition, I would still, if you are on a groundwater system, be very cautious about the amounts that you use. The only upside is we’re moving into cooler weather. The leaves are starting to fall to trees, and further we move into cooler weather, the less and less likely that we’ll see a serious ground emergency occur in the state.

Nick Mullins:
As Cloe states no matter what the indicators are, it’s still important to conserve water.

Weedon Cloe:
Even though it may be a watch warning or even normal, just conservation of water is important and every little bit helps in the long run, so just being aware of your particular system, be it a private well or a municipal drinking water supply, just kind of keep your eyes open and conserve as much as possible.

Nick Mullins:
For Allegheny Mountain Radio News, this is Nick Mullins