In parched Rhode Island, farmers are suffering and water suppliers are beginning to crack down on excessive water use.

01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, August 13, 2005

BY BENJAMIN N. GEDAN
Journal Staff Writer

The tomatoes at Nick Russo's farm are sunburned, the cucumber plants have wilted and the peppers look pan-fried. Nearby, at Confreda Farms and Produce, Vinny Confreda is tending rows of shriveled pumpkins and severely stunted cornstalks.

The Rhode Island Water Resources Board has not declared a drought this summer, despite prolonged heat and dry weather. But that has provided little comfort to farmers with dying crops and to water suppliers tapping depleted wells.

Although a water emergency has not been declared, public officials are taking action. The state Drought Steering Committee will convene Tuesday for the first time in three years. The committee is made up of state officials and water and agriculture experts, and is charged with recommending emergency measures to the governor. The Water Resources Board recently issued a plea for conservation, and throughout Rhode Island, water suppliers are restricting outdoor water use and punishing scofflaws.

"We're in tough shape," said Al Bettencourt, executive director of the Rhode Island Farm Bureau. "We need rain really, really bad."

There is little relief in sight. The National Weather Service is predicting more scorching weather, and temperatures today are forecast to reach 95 degrees in Providence.

After a snowy winter and a rainy spring, two months of unusually dry and sweltering weather have parched Rhode Island. In June, the average temperature at T.F. Green Airport was 69.7 degrees, a full degree warmer than normal. Rainfall was .64 inches, down almost 3 inches from normal. In July, the average temperature of 74.3 degrees was also a degree above average, and rainfall was 1.03 inches, down 2.15 inches from normal.

The weather has been even hotter this month. The average temperature so far is nearly 79 degrees, 5.5 degrees above normal. Temperatures have reached 90 degrees on six days, twice the normal tally for the entire month. Residents have not endured five August days of 90-degree temperatures since 1988, and before that, 1949.

Only .22 inch of rain fell the first 11 days of August. "I don't think there's anyplace in the state that's above average in rainfall and below average in temperature," said Charlie Foley, a National Weather Service meteorologist. "We are in what they are calling an abnormally dry period, just below the threshold of a moderate drought."

The impact has been widely felt, from vineyards in Middletown to city parks in Woonsocket, where children have flocked to a Slip 'N Slide and crowded buses to Spring Lake in Burrillville.

Water supply boards have recently instituted new restrictions and increased enforcement to ease pressure on their systems.

The Kent County Water Authority, which serves 26,500 customers in communities including West Warwick and Coventry, has dispatched field workers to monitor compliance with a regulation limiting outdoor water use to odd-numbered homes on odd-numbered days, and even-numbered homes on even-numbered days.

Patrolling day and night, the authority has issued 785 warnings and has shut off water service to 27 homeowners caught violating the policy twice. Still, heavy water use for filling pools, washing cars and watering lawns has depleted storage tanks and forced water authority officials to consider a ban.

"We're running into two months now in this mini-drought," said Timothy J. Brown, the water authority's general manager. "We need our customers to cooperate."

Water authority pumps are working overtime, but the system has no supply problems. Most of its product comes from the Scituate Reservoir, which supplies water to 60 percent of Rhode Islanders and remains at the high levels established by winter and spring storms.

The Pawtucket Water Supply Board -- which serves 23,000 customers in Pawtucket, Central Falls and Cumberland -- also boasts an ample supply, General Manager Pamela Marchand said.

But homeowners and water suppliers that rely on groundwater are seeing water quality and pressure decline. In Swansea, the lack of rain and stream flow has left 9 of the town's 10 wells below acceptable levels, with another tapped dry. The town on Wednesday closed the Hornbine water treatment facility, after water from a well field slowed to a trickle.

Residents, who were permitted to water lawns every other day from 6 to 9 a.m. and 6 to 9 p.m., have been confined since Tuesday to morning watering. Fifty violators have been warned, and starting yesterday, homeowners sneaking water to brown lawns have faced shut off.

As elsewhere, diminished streams in Swansea are not recharging depleted well fields, and officials may declare their first water emergency since 2002. "There's rocks; there's absolutely no water. You wouldn't know there was a stream there," said Water District Supt. Robert A. Marquis. "The situation is at a critical stage."

In some areas, groundwater contains elevated levels of iron and manganese. Other people are finding uneven water pressure in their showers.

The Portsmouth Water and Fire District has mandated odd-even outdoor water use. In Westerly, the town asked residents to discontinue watering lawns, filling pools and washing cars. In Jamestown, where the North Pond Reservoir is 20 inches below the spillway, lawn watering is prohibited and vegetable gardens and flower beds may drink up for only 15 minutes every other day. Smithfield officials are distributing low-flow shower heads.

Reminders of the not-quite drought are legion. The freshman baseball field in Barrington looks like hay. At the Blithewold Mansion, Gardens & Arboretum in Bristol, the rock garden and pond is just "mud and muck," said Julie Morris, director of horticulture.

The weather has helped a few Rhode Islanders. At Newport Vineyards, owner John Nunes said the dry weather makes Chardonnay, Riesling and Pinot Noir grapes grow smaller, concentrating their flavor. The same is true for the fruits at Raymond Polseno's Pippin Orchard Nurseries, in Cranston, which are smaller and sweeter than usual.

But most farmers are in despair. Bettencourt, of the Rhode Island Farm Bureau, who does not irrigate his 15 acres, has lost two-thirds of his sweet corn crop, and the blossoms are withering on butternut squash plants. Confreda, who runs the biggest vegetable farm in Rhode Island, has lost 20 percent of his crop. He spends $1,000 a day to irrigate his 400 acres, but within three days, he will have emptied the second of his two ponds.

The cornstalks that normally reach 6 1/2 feet are 2 feet tall, and the pumpkins are dehydrated and dying. "The plants are wilted and shriveled up," Confreda said.

With staff reports by Randal Edgar, C. Eugene Emery Jr., Kia Hall Hayes, John Hill, Alex Kuffner, Michael P. McKinney, Thomas J. Morgan, Cynthia Needham, Chelsea Phua, Barbara Polichetti, Richard Salit and Arthur Kimball-Stanley.

Benjamin N. Gedan can be reached at bgedan [at] projo.com.

Digital Extra: Check the latest precipitation forecasts, local water restrictions, tips for growing gardens in dry times and beating the heat, and the latest weather at:

http://projo.com/weather/