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In North Carolina, Gov. Michael F. Easley asked residents Monday to stop using water for any purpose "not essential to public health and safety." He warned that he would soon have to declare a state of emergency if voluntary efforts fell short.

"Now I don't want to have to use these powers," Mr. Easley told a meeting of mayors and other city officials. "As leaders of your communities, you know what works best at the local level. I am asking for your help."

Officials in the central North Carolina town of Siler City estimate that without rain, they are 80 days from draining the Lower Rocky River Reservoir, which supplies water for the town’s 8,200 people.

In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city's main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days.

The hard numbers have shocked the Southeast into action, even as many people wonder why things seem to have gotten so bad so quickly.

Last week, Mayor Charles L. Turner of Siler City declared a water shortage emergency and ordered each “household, business and industry" to reduce water use by 50 percent. Penalties for not complying range from stiff fines to the termination of water service.

"It’s really alarming," said Janice Terry, co-owner of the Best Foods cafeteria in Siler City. To curtail water use, Best Foods has swapped its dishes for paper plates and foam cups.

Most controversially, it has stopped offering tap water to customers, making them buy 69-cent bottles of water instead. "We’ve had people walk out," Ms. Terry said. "They get mad when they can't get a free glass of water.”

For the better part of 18 months, cloudless blue skies and high temperatures have shriveled crops and bronzed lawns from North Carolina to Alabama, quietly creating what David E. Stooksbury, the state climatologist of Georgia, has dubbed "the Rodney Dangerfield of natural disasters," a reference to that comedian’s repeated lament that he got "no respect."

"People pay attention to hurricanes," Mr. Stooksbury said. "They pay attention to tornadoes and earthquakes. But a drought will sneak up on you."

The situation has gotten so bad that by all of Mr. Stooksbury's measures — the percentage of moisture in the soil, the flow rate of rivers, inches of rain — this drought has broken every record in Georgia's history.

Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta, at a news conference last week, begged people in her city to conserve water. “Please, please, please do not use water unnecessarily,” Ms. Franklin said. “This is not a test.”

Others wondered why the calls to conserve came so late.

"I think there's been an ostrich-head-in-the-sand syndrome that has been growing," said Mark Crisp, an Atlanta-based consultant with the engineering firm C. H. Guernsey. "Because we seem to have been very, very slow in our actions to deal with an impending crisis."

Mr. Crisp is among a chorus of experts who have warned for years that Atlanta is asking too much of Lake Lanier, a situation quickly being compounded by an absence of rain.

Many had hoped that hurricane season, as it has in the past, would bring several soaking storms to the Southeast to replenish reservoirs that are at or near all-time lows. But the longed-for rains never materialized, and now in October, traditionally the driest month, significant rainfall remains out of the picture.

"We're in a stressful situation now," Mr. Crisp said, "but come next spring, if we don't have substantial rainfall this winter, these reservoirs are not going to refill."

That would leave metro Atlanta dry in the summer, which traditionally has the highest water use of the year.

Others pointed to the Southeast's inexperience with drought and to explosive growth in population as complicating factors.

"In the West, people expect that it's dry, and you're going to have drought situations," said Michael J. Hayes, director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "In the Southeast, people think of it as being wet, and I think that mindset makes it tougher to identify worst-case scenarios and plan to that level."

"Here's the fly in the ointment," Mr. Hayes added. "The vulnerability in the Southeast has changed. Population shifts, increased competition and demand for water has increased, so that's made this drought worse than it might have been."

Within two weeks, Carol Couch, director of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, is expected to send Gov. Sonny Perdue recommendations on tightening water restrictions, which may include mandatory cutbacks on commercial and industrial users.

If that happens, experts at the National Drought Mitigation Center said, it would be the first time a major metropolitan area in the United States had been forced to take such drastic action to save its water supply.

"The situation is very dire," Mr. Hayes said.

Federal panel urged to seek grants for drought-hit farms

By MARGARET LILLARD
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina's drought is the worst on record, difficult for communities but devastating for farms to a degree that won't be fully realized for years, Gov. Mike Easley told a congressional committee Thursday.

Easley and other witnesses pressed for funds for agricultural disasters, including the drought gripping the Southeast and parts of the West, including Idaho, and wildfires that are ravaging Southern California.

The two-term Democratic governor appeared before the House Agriculture Committee at the behest of U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-N.C., who last month was joined by 53 other members of Congress in sending a letter to President Bush that sought direct disaster assistance payments for drought-stricken farmers.

While the federal government has declared a disaster in 85 of North Carolina's 100 counties, making farmers eligible for low-interest loans, Easley, Etheridge and others said Thursday that non-repayable grants are the best answer.

"Our farmers need more money," Easley said. "They do not need more loans that they will be unable to repay when their crops fail to bring in enough income."

He said he hasn't bothered asking for a federal emergency declaration, which would trigger grants, "simply because I know there's no money available" as Congress and President Bush settle into a protracted fight over appropriations.

"I don't want to raise false hopes for the farmers," Easley said during the hearing, which was streamed live over the Internet from Washington.

North Carolina is one of the hardest-hit states - the hardest, according to Easley - in a drought that also stretches across most of Tennessee and Alabama, and parts of Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia and Kentucky.

As of last week, the U.S. Drought Monitor said more than a third of the Southeast, including 72 North Carolina counties, is in exceptional drought, the worst classification.

Severe to extreme drought plagues Western states, including Nevada, Idaho and California, where the dry weather has helped fuel catastrophic wildfires.

No relief is expected for either region before January, according to a climate outlook map presented by agricultural meteorologist Brad Rippey. The chart indicated the drought will persist or worsen in North Carolina, Virginia and parts of several Southwestern states.

"At the very best, they will remain the same," he said.

That means farmers whose harvest was devastated this year, starting with an Easter freeze and exacerbated by the drought, will be in the same boat as they try to prepare for next year's planting, Easley said.

"If we don't replenish our lakes and ponds and streams during the winter, then we really are going to face some tremendous challenges in the spring," he said.

Many will have to decide in the coming months how to cut their losses - perhaps by early sale of cattle herds, or by getting out of farming altogether, he said Those decisions will lead to "a ripple effect" well beyond agricultural businesses.

In North Carolina's mountains, where the freeze shocked apple trees and the drought stunted the crop, farmers may be tempted to sell their land for subdivisions.

"This affects more than just agriculture," Easley said. "Everybody wants to retire in the mountains, it's beautiful. But development is moving so rapidly, I'm afraid all of these farms will get developed and I'm afraid that will be bad for our environment in western North Carolina."

Easley said the state has done all it can to address the drought locally, such as easing restrictions on water-sharing between communities, providing grants to buy and ship scarce livestock feed, considering tax credits for industries that save water, and restricting water consumption by homeowners.

"We're getting tremendous cooperation from our citizens and our local governments," Easley said.

"But for the farmers and agriculture, they need rain. There is no replacement for rain. There is not much you can do to conserve and cut back in agriculture. You have to have the rain for the crops to grow."