Mitigating Drought

 Mitigation Tools for States

 Case Study: Illinois

State agencies represented on the Illinois Drought Response Task Force undertook the following actions during the 1988–90 drought:

Department of Transportation—Division of Water Resources (DOT/DWR)

• Served as co-chair of the DRTF
• Resolved emerging water use conflicts—e.g., DOT/DWR and other agencies met with irrigators to seek voluntary restriction of their water use whenever irrigators’ high-capacity wells were presumed to affect domestic wells
• Involved in developing state’s position on diversion of additional Lake Michigan water through the Illinois river system, to help commercial barge traffic below St. Louis

Environmental Protection Agency—Public Water Supply Division (EPA/PWSD)

• Maintained liaison with water treatment plant operators and retained records of available resources and consumption
• Monitored 35 public water supplies that had previously experienced shortages in less severe droughts
• Granted emergency permits to some communities to use water supplies not previously considered for public use (e.g., water from an interstate highway borrow pit); also worked with communities to resolve water quality issues as new sources were sought
• Worked closely with suppliers reaching into new surface waters and various quarries to ensure that water quality standards were maintained

Department of Commerce and Community Affairs (DCCA)

• Prepared and distributed pamphlets on water conservation to more than 500 municipalities for local copying and distribution; also prepared, printed, and distributed additional drought-related material
• Coordinated communications between DRTF and local government
• Held 2 workshops to obtain feedback from municipalities on their problems; as a result of the workshops, several communities adopted DCCA’s sample ordinance for water conservation

Department of Agriculture—Natural Resources Division (DOA/DNR)

• Produced weekly crop report that provided near real time assessments of soil moisture and crop conditions throughout 1988 and 1989 growing seasons
• Established a “Hay Hotline”

Emergency Services and Disaster Agency (ESDA)

• Maintained piping and pumps for distribution in Illinois where needed to tap into alternate water supplies
• Worked with Illinois National Guard to provide “water buffalos” to communities without a nearby water source

Department of Energy and Natural Resources—Water Survey Division (DENR/SWS)

• Provided weather and resource depletion data to DRTF member agencies
• Evaluated alleged interference between high-capacity wells and nearby wells

Department of Conservation/Office of Resource Management (DOC/ORM)

• Provided indicators of drought severity by monitoring terrestrial and aquatic natural systems in the state
• Maintained lakes for recreation; those with sufficient storage would have been used for water supplies, had that situation arisen

(Summarized from Wilhite, D.A. 1993. Drought Mitigation Technologies in the United States: With Future Policy Recommendations. Final Report of a Cooperative Agreement between the Soil Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; and the International Drought Information Center, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. IDIC Technical Report Series 93–1, International Drought Information Center, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska.)

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