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Thursday, August 15, 2002

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Drought worse than we thought

To the Editor:

As stated in your newspaper article of Aug. 12, Bucks County is in the grips of a serious drought. The rainfall data you presented showed a 365-day deficit of 10.5 inches through July 23. I have been recording daily rainfall data for Furlong (Buckingham Township) for the last 30 years and, using my own 30-year averages, have concluded that we have actually been in an almost continuous four-year drought since July 1998.

My data show that since July 2001 we have a deficit of 18.6 inches, and since July 1998 a deficit of 26.0 inches. This despite including the months of August/September 1999, during which two torrential rain events occurred (one of which was Hurricane Floyd) that technically and temporarily interrupted the drought. Without these singular events where the rain came so hard that much of it became runoff, the four-year cumulative deficit could be near 40 inches.

I now wonder what effect the drought conditions, along with the local housing boom, are having on our ground water and wells. An update on this aspect of the drought would be most informative.

Richard Hanauer

Furlong