The 1930-1931 Drought and Its Effect Upon Public Water Supply

Abstract

THE 1930 drought has dramatized as never before the need of safe, adequate, palatable, public water supplies. The widespread interest of the general public in the drought, the suffering it caused, the financial loss to those living in farming and rural areas, the anxiety of water works men and those in industries dependent upon water, all have been factors making for more adequate water supplies and for more completely equipped and better operated water filtration plants. This drought and the disastrous flood over the Mississippi watershed in 1927 have acted so to accentuate public health work in the mind of the everyday person that public health machinery in all the states lying within the zone of these catastrophes is now far more efficient than it was 5 years ago. Each state sanitary engineer in the sorely distressed states has summed up the conditions which have existed in 1930 and to April, 1931, and it is from these supervisors of public water supply and sanitation who are constantly in touch with such conditions all over their states that the material in this brief summary has been obtained. In each of the affected states, the Division of Sanitary Engineering of the State Health Department was able to lend immediate help when water supply emergencies arose in the cities over their state. The gigantic size of the problem is difficult to realize but some definite conception can be gained by picturing the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky which embrace a territory of 200,000 square miles, and imagining water standing 2 feet deep over this entire territory. That is the amount of water which these 6 states did not get in 1930 and hence was not available for vegetation, streams, ground water supplies, and the manifold other water uses. Is it any wonder that e'mergencies were created such .as were never known before?