Upstate left high and dry

Despite what seems like every-afternoon storms, drought conditions worsen

Mic Smith
The Post and Courier

Tom Galloway walks on a section of Lake Moultrie's bed right behind his house on Bonneau Beach on Monday. Galloway says he has not been able to use his pontoon boat in about two months.

BONNEAU BEACH — Thunderclouds are booming every day, it seems, but Tom Galloway's pontoon boat stays at his dock, stranded each day a little farther away from the bathers floating in tubes on Lake Moultrie.

"It's been high and dry for at least two months now," Galloway said. The boat, in fact, has been high and dry for at least eight months of the past year. Hit-and-miss storms are keeping the Lowcountry moist, but the drought is still on — maybe worse than a year ago.

Lake Moultrie was a foot and half lower Monday than it was a year ago — and still dropping. The lake is losing about a half-inch of water daily. Early spring rains replenished it somewhat. But the summer started off dry, and the rain since has fallen largely in the Lowcountry and Midlands, with the most along the coast.

Upstate streams feed the Marion-Moultrie lakes, the source of most of the drinking water in the Charleston area. Most water systems in the Upstate already are under voluntary or mandatory restrictions on use.

Rainfall totals for July along those streams are "a column of zeros," said Molly Gore of Santee Cooper corporate communications, and Lake Moultrie is almost 4 feet below normal levels for this time of year. The utility manages the lake system.

Restrictions might be tightened on some of those Upstate systems today, after the S.C. Drought Response Committee meets in Columbia. Berkeley, Dorchester and Charleston water systems are not expected to feel the pinch, at least not yet.

"Water supply. That's the primary focus (of the committee) at this point," said Hope Mizzell, state climatologist. "The coast and Midlands had more rainfall in July than the first part of the summer."

North Carolina and South Carolina lakes upstream of Moultrie are somewhat fuller because they are under drought management protocols that have sharply reduced the flow from their dams, despite some rainfall.

The Marion-Moultrie lakes are under federal mandate to spill water in order to supplement the Charleston drinking supply, industries and other freshwater uses in the otherwise brackish estuaries below them. Without that release, saltwater would begin to creep in.

"If Marion and Moultrie didn't have to release, they would be in the same position (as upstream lakes), the very little they get they'd be able to save," Mizzell said.

One of the things the drought committee will consider is whether to show six coastal counties, including the tri-county area, as having an improvement on their status of incipient, the lowest drought status. That won't be an easy decision — rainfall has been so spotty that Edisto Beach has 10 more inches for the year than other parts of Colleton County, which is in a moderate drought.

The state fell into a severe drought in 2007 that lasted until an outburst of rains in early spring this year. The effect on rivers was exacerbated because groundwater hadn't been replenished from a previous severe five-year drought that ended in 2002. The only real short-term solution for this season is a period of prolonged tropical storm rains.

At its worst in 2007, Lake Moultrie nearly dropped to its record low of 10 feet down — a number set during the disastrous drought of the early 1950s. The dry lake bed today resembles the lake then, Galloway remembers. "It was down for a long time," he said.

The lake last year didn't fall far enough to put the water supply in jeopardy, but it did fall far enough to have concerned water managers eyeing restrictions. This year, water use restrictions already are making a difference in the Upstate, Mizzell said. Even water systems under voluntary restrictions are reporting as much as a 15 percent drop in use.

"I think we've been in drought for so long, most citizens are realizing it and are taking some personal responsibility to conserve," she said.