Pa. Governor Declares Drought Emergency

Gov. Thomas J. Ridge declared a drought emergency Wednesday in 12 western and central counties, banning nonessential water uses and allowing towns to receive emergency water resources.

It was the latest action taken to deal with a drought that began during the summer and has affected millions of people from south-central New York down to northern Virginia.

With reservoirs dried out in Pennsylvania, people have resorted to taking sponge baths and washing their clothes in neighboring towns.

In Maryland, officials struggle to keep drinking water flowing to people along a nearly dry tributary of the Potomac River.

The Delaware River Basin Commission this week asked 7.3 million people in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Delaware to voluntarily curtail their water use.

Pat Palovich, who lives with her husband and mother in Vintondale, Pa., said she travels five to six miles to a laundry in a neighboring town. For two weeks, the water supply in Vintondale has been shut off every other day, leaving its 800 residents without water for 24 hours at a time because the town’s reservoir is dangerously low.

In western Pennsylvania, the onetime town of Corydon had been under 20 feet of water since the Allegheny Reservoir was built in 1965.

Because of the drought, however, the town is reappearing, revealing broken gravestones, roads, tree stumps and the rubble of houses.

Even Lake Erie is down about a foot from last year, and the Army Corps of Engineers predicts that it will continue to recede for the next few months.

Some streams are so low that trout are dying, inspiring angler Walt Fillmann and his daughters, ages 11 and 7, to run a rescue mission on northern Pennsylvania’s Slab Cabin Run, scooping fish from shallow puddles and hauling them by bucket to surviving deep pools. They have permission from state wildlife officials.

But about 50 miles south of Washington, where growth in Spotsylvania County has meant higher demands for water from new housing, officials are considering rationing water because the reservoir is lower than it has ever been.

In western Maryland, Allegany County officials have been struggling for a month to keep drinking water flowing to about 2,000 homes and businesses along Georges Creek, a Potomac River tributary that has run nearly dry.

Since mid-November, the rural communities of Lonaconing, Midland, Barton, Carlos and Shaft have been served by several miles of hastily assembled aboveground plastic pipes and fire hoses carrying water from a reservoir near Frostburg.