Power of prayer?

Think our local water restrictions are little more than a nuisance? Ask the people in Orme, TN, who get water for only three hours a night. Or pay a visit to northern Georgia. You'll see what consequences not thinking about about water conservation can bring. My fiancee and I took a trip to Athens, GA, a couple weekends ago. The TV commercials, news stories and signs all over the University of Georgia campus reminding people about the importance of conserving were not only constant reminders of the problems caused by the drought. They were also scary.

In our area, we've only reached Stage 1 or Stage 2 water restrictions. Perhaps the toughest are Wilmington's ban on outdoor watering. Of course, if you drive around my neighborhood at night, you'll see that's being ignored on a pretty large basis. In Athens, they use letters instead of numbers to label their water restriction levels. When I was there the city was already on Level E. But it was formulating the soon-to-be implemented Level F. That called for even more drastic cutbacks than the already imposed 10 percent water usage cuts. Want to ignore the restrictions? Count on being fined hundreds of dollars and being charged exhorbitant rates for the extra water you use. Things were so bleak, that when a waitress at an Athens restaurant refilled my water glass (which I thought was rather large considering what was going on) at dinner one night, I made sure to drink as much of it as I could just so I wouldn't feel like I was wasting.

The water shortage in Georgia has led to fights between Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue and his counterpart in Alabama over water rights along rivers and lakes shared by the two states. Things have gotten so bad in Georgia that Perdue and a couple hundred of other people held a prayer rally on the steps of the state capitol in Atlanta Tuesday to ask God to make it rain. Coincidentally or not, it did rain in Atlanta and other parts of the parched Peach State last night. And while the half-inch of rain won't do much to make up the area's shortfall, every bit helps, and it has a lot of people wondering if the praying did indeed work.

Look, I'm not some tree-hugging environmentalist or someone who is overly religious, but I do think we need to do whatever we can to conserve water around here. Take some time to check out the news media in places like Atlanta and Athens to see what it's really like, and keep in mind that our rainfall deficit is greater than it is there.

So turn your sprinklers off (your grass is going dormant for the winter anyway). Take shorter showers. Turn off the water when you brush your teeth. Stop rinsing out every dish before you put it in the dishwasher. Do only full loads of laundry. Leave a bucket out to catch the rain that is supposed to fall today. Or if it's your kind of thing, get down on your knees and ask for help from a higher power. The folks in Georgia will tell you all of it helps.