Despite the arrival of some much-needed rain and colder temperatures in Massachusetts over the last week or so, state officials declared on Friday that critical drought conditions persist in most areas. And Cape Cod and the islands, which previously had avoided drought conditions, is now designated as being in “mild drought”.
The state saw virtually no rain in September, October and much of November, leading to drought conditions that have depleted groundwater supplies. It has also dried out ground cover that contributed to an historically bad and elongated wildfire season.
Most of the state received between 2 and 4 inches of rain in the past two weeks, helping to put those wildfires out. But that’s still between 1.5 and 3.5 inches below normal, according to the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, and not enough to replenish the missing precipitation.
“We are seeing areas in streams that have dried up,” said Vandana Rao, the state’s director of water policy. “We’ve seen streams that are seeing no flow at all. So, there’s ponding within the streams. And so that’s impacting our aquatic resources, it’s impacting fisheries, it’s impacting the movement of fish that may typically happen at this time of year.”
Groundwater takes longer to react to drought, Rao said. But with four months of below normal precipitation, the impact is now being seen.
“Those levels are going down across the state,” she said. “And they impact our water supplies -- be it a private well or a public water supply system -- because all of that is coming from the same groundwater source. And so we are seeing some of those impacts through the data that we monitor.”
In Attleboro, which relies on a surface water-based supply system for drinking water, the drought is “kind of a perfect storm,” according to Mayor Cathleen DeSimone, who spoke Monday with GBH’s Boston Public Radio.
“We’re vulnerable from that aspect,” DeSimone said. “We have two water treatment plants. One had been off for a little more than two years because we had PFAS compliance issues. So we’re running on the one. So we were already going into it, if you will, with kind of one hand tied behind our back.”
Attleboro banned all outdoor watering beginning in July as a result of the dry conditions.
“And then last month we asked people to start exercising indoor water conservation,” DeSimone said. “You can’t really impose things on the inside. But we started a campaign with daily water tips and really asking people to conserve.”
At the same time, the little rain the state has seen has provided welcome relief to firefighters.
“We’ve had a couple of nice rain events here, one on Thanksgiving, that really kind of put an end to this historic season here we’ve had since the beginning of October, where we had a little over 650 fires for about 4,000 acres here in Massachusetts,” said Alex Belote with the Bureau of Fire Control and Forestry at the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation.
“There may be a little bit of smoldering in areas that burn deep in the interiors, but they’re not really at risk of spreading any further,” Belote said. “And we’re now back into our kind of normal or even a little below average temperatures with regular precipitation. And so, yeah, it looks like we’re at the end of that historic fire season here in Massachusetts.”
Among the towns left scrambling to contain brush fires this fall was Salem, where over 170 acres burned in the days just before the city’s busy Halloween celebrations.
The city’s mayor, Dominick Pangallo, told Boston Public Radio that the drought and fires should be sounding alarms about the changing climate.
“As a coastal community, we’re used to talking about the climate crisis in terms of flooding and storm surge and the impacts along our shorelines,” Pangallo said. “But this is a different chapter of that book, and one that we’re going to be living with for a long time. So, I think it’s really critical that people have conversations about, ‘these are the consequences of the climate crisis that we’re living with.’”
Pangallo said his town is now talking about adding the kind of brushfire equipment that was needed to respond to the fires Salem saw this year, because they had to rely on equipment from more rural towns.
“Because looking ahead to the future, we should anticipate that this is going to be something we see more frequently, and we need to be comfortable having those conversations with one another,” Pangallo said. “Otherwise, we’re just going to continue to be caught off guard when these crises crop up.”
In the shorter term, small changes in behavior can have a large impact in conserving much-needed water, Rao said.
“We can take shorter showers. We can make sure we’re not running our water when you’re brushing your teeth or shaving,” Rao said. “And small things like fixing leaks, which may feel small to us because it’s a little drip in our faucet or in the toilet. The water that’s wasted because of that can really start to accumulate. … And anything else that you can do to make sure that you’re influencing others around you to use less water, that will also help in the long run.”
