ALBANY, GA -
Nearly two dozen south Georgia counties are mired in exceptional drought conditions.
The rest are considered in extreme drought. The Chickasawhatchee Wildlife Management Area used to be Georgia's second largest swamp. Now, it's virtually dry, And farmers are worried about another difficult year.
It doesn't take much to see the effect that the dry weather has had on south Georgia, just look at what used to be the Chickasawhatchee swamp, it's so dry, it's got water experts shaking their heads.
"There's a stream flow gage at Elmodel on the Chickasawhatchee and it's reading .41 today which is less than a half of a cubic foot per second which is ridiculously low, almost dry, essentially dry, the previous low for this date and the period of record which I think is 26 years was 103 cubic feet per second. We're in unprecedented territory, I think," said Doug Wilson, Georgia Water Planning & Police Center Executive Director.
The dry conditions are causing concern among farmers in Lee County.
"We may not have enough water to irrigate, certainly not out of the irrigation ponds and then, we're beginning to question are our aquifers going to have enough water for irrigation," said Doug Collins, UGA-Lee County Extension Agent.
Water experts say the aquifers are down, but aren't in danger of going dry. If we got torrential rains from a hurricane, the Floridan will recharge quickly but the Clayton which sits 800 feet below Albany and recharges in Randolph County will take longer to rebound.
"These deeper aquifers, it's going to take a while for that situation to correct itself," said Wilson.
Farmers hope drought conditions won't be a repeat of last year. Dry land farmers aren't even considering corn this year and some lost not one, but two crops.
"There was cotton planted on dry land, it didn't emerge because of the drought, they came back with soybeans, it didn't emerge finally they came back with grain sorghum and it got a little bit of rain and it came up and it made a crop," said Collins.
Experts say there's no doubt wildlife in the Chickasawhatchee Wildlife Management Area will suffer at the hands of the drought, whether it's some fish, or other animals and habitat that depends on those animals, and there's no telling what affect it may have on our food supply this year.
The state has until March first to decide whether to enact the Flint River Drought Protection Act. It was used in 2001 and 2002 to pay farmers 9 million dollars not to irrigate some fields to save water.
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