Americas Droughts Are Causing Major Water Shortages

There are not that many people left that you tell you about the severe consequences that many people in the Midwestern United States suffered when there was a drought there that lasted for quite few years during the first third of the twentieth century. People everywhere had to watch as their farmlands literally dried up and turned to dust blowing in the wind. It was almost like a phenomenon. Year after year these farmers waited for relief from the dustbowl that their lands had become.

This past year the Midwestern states have had anything but a drought. They were continuously drenched week after week and instead of their fields and towns drying up, quite the opposite was true. Everywhere you looked in state after state there were fields of new crops that were flooded beyond salvation. This is one year when they were praying that the rain would just stop for a while.

Now it is Southeastern states that have experienced droughts over the past several years and they still have not had much relief. Although it seems that most states have received a little more rainfall than they did last year, places like Georgia are still behind in their rainfall amounts. These droughts for the past few years have caused streams, lakes, and even some river flows to all but dry completely up. Many residents have experienced severe water shortages and tourist spots like Lake Lanier in Georgia have suffered because of the low water levels.

When states suffer severe droughts like those that have occurred lately, many times limits or bans are placed on outdoor water usage. This is to help ensure that there will be enough drinking water and water that is needed for more important things than washing cars and watering lawns. Georgia even tried to have the state line redrawn where it meets Tennessee to have access to more water. Georgia also wanted to stop allowing so much water to flow down stream into Florida.

You know things are bad when states want to start shifting around borders of one state to another and limit the amount of natural water flow from there state into another. Northern California has considered the same thing to limit the amount of water that flows downstream in their state down to Southern California. It has to be really bad when one part of a state does not want to share the water with the rest of the state.

Hopefully there will be more drought relief in the near future. Other states that have also experienced droughts recently are Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. Experiencing continual droughts this wide spread will take its toll over time and we just have to hope that this is not going to last for very much longer.