Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 11, 1990 TAG: 9003112842
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Long
The drought, the region's worst since 1961, when an eight-year dry period ended, already is bad news for the Midwest's economy, wildlife and recreation, and "the odds suggest continuation of the drought well into 1990," the Midwestern Climate Center at the University of Illinois reported.
Midwest farmers who grow corn and soybeans, two of the nation's most important agricultural commodities, could escape a repeat of the 1988 drought disaster if spring and summer rains come at the right time, as they did in the otherwise dry 1989 growing season.
But such rains are only a start on solving the region's serious long-term hydrologic problems. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that it will take six consecutive years of normal rainfall for the region's hardest hit underground aquifers, wells, lakes and reservoirs to recover.
"It's a pretty frightening situation," said Donald A. Wilhite, director of the University of Nebraska's Center for Agriculture, Meteorology and Climatology.
Hardest hit are Iowa, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and western Illinois. Drought conditions also exist in parts of Nebraska and Montana.
Mississippi River barge operators are worried that shipping will be disrupted next summer by low water at St. Louis, where the drought-starved Missouri River empties into mid-America's main water highway. Low water levels on the Missouri could also affect a number of hydroelectric plants on the river.
"If I owned a barge company I'd be real concerned," said Kenneth Kunkle, director of the Midwestern Climate Center. "I would not be at all certain that I could ship goods back and forth along the Mississippi this year. The hydrologic system is all dried out."
That condition means that, more than ever, farmers are dependent on seasonal rain. "Plants in the Midwest don't get enough rain normally during the summer to keep up, so they extract water from the soil that has been stored in the winter and spring," Kunkle said.
"There is no reserve soil moisture in the ground to a depth of 5 or 6 feet," said Ron M. Nargang, head of Minnesota's drought task force. "There's nothing left in the ground for crops."
Winter wheat growers in Kansas, hard hit by drought last winter, are encouraged by recent storms that have dumped late season snow on their fields.
But it is so dry in north central Iowa that it would take 30 inches of rain between now and June to refill the exhausted aquifers, and the chances of that happening are only "one in 50" said Stanley Changnon, the Midwestern Climate Center's chief scientist.
"We've been keeping records for 117 years, and 1988 and 1989 combined for the lowest two-year precipitation we've ever had in Iowa," said Harry J. Hillaker, the farm state's climatologist. "It's been unusually dry for an unusually long time."
Effects of the drought are evident throughout the region.
Rare winter dust storms cut visibility in parts of Nebraska last month, while in Minnesota equally rare winter grass fires burned. Wisconsin canceled the early trout fishing season in late February because low water in streams has reduced fish populations 80 percent to 100 percent. Bloomington, Ill., has banned car washing this winter because two lakes that supply drinking water to 60,000 people almost dried up last autumn. Right now water is being pumped into the lakes from a nearby river.
In parts of south central Iowa the National Guard is beginning its second year of hauling in water to several communities. Cedar Rapids, the state's second largest city, is busy drilling new wells along the banks of the Cedar River because other wells that its 110,000 residents rely upon have dried up.
And in North Dakota, water in 200-mile-long Lake Sakakawea is 20 feet below normal, leaving piers and boat docks high and dry.
Biologists in the region report sharp declines in wetland wildlife from ducks to muskrats. Large fish kills are predicted for the spring because of low water and the subsequent death of aquatic plants that help add oxygen to the water. The waterfowl population is down dramatically because prairie potholes used for nesting have dried up across the upper Midwest.
"We've got deficient stream flows in about 90 percent of the state," said Nargang, Minnesota's drought czar. "And we have extremely low lake levels across the southern two-thirds of the state. Ground water levels have continued to drop over the winter, which is very unusual."
"There is almost no water in our spring-fed streams because the springs are not feeding them," said Ronald Groener, spokesman for Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources. "The water table needs to be recharged."
"Millions and millions of trees" in Minnesota's extensive forests have already suffered massive damage, said James Brooks, the assistant state forestry director. "You can drive along the highways and not see anything but red trees" weakened by drought and killed by attacking insects.
"It's a very unpleasant sight," Brooks said.
Both Minnesota and Nebraska are already preparing to curtail irrigation next summer because of depleted water tables.
The greatest threat is to barge traffic on the Mississippi, the region's vital water highway link with Gulf of Mexico grain export facilities. Because of the drought, there is a danger of low water between St. Louis, where the already depleted Missouri River empties into the Mississippi, and Cairo, Ill., where the Ohio River empties into the shipping channel.
This critical stretch of river depends on water from both the Missouri and the upper Mississippi region, and those two areas are in the midst of the drought area, particularly the Missouri River, which has its headwaters in drought-parched eastern Montana.
"We're continuing to be concerned because the Mississippi River is still very low at St. Louis and the Missouri River basin is very dry," said James Tuttle, water control chief for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Mississippi River and Lower Mississippi Valley Division.
Water flow in the Missouri is regulated by the Corps of Engineers, which releases supplies stored in North and South Dakota reservoirs. Last year the corps used up a third of its strategic reserve of water and, even so, the river was so low that hydroelectric plants were forced to cut their power by 50 percent while communities drawing drinking and irrigation water from the river were limited as well.
Shippers on the Missouri River have already been told they will have to reduce the loads in their barges next summer by at least 15 percent to avoid striking bottom, and that is bad news for shippers on the busier Mississippi.
"That Missouri River reservoir system is essential to operations on the Mississippi," said Jeffery A. Smith, a vice president of the American Waterways Operators Association. The Missouri supplied 75 percent of the water in the lower Mississippi in 1988, when widespread drought and low water forced the Corps of Engineers to close the Mississippi to shipping several times.
"This drought is turning into a real problem," Smith said.
"The persistence of the dryness is really starting to get to us now," said Iowa's Hillaker. "Ground water is always the last thing to show that there's a drought going on and the last thing to recover once you finally get out of one."
by CNB