It was nice to step out into yesterday’s rain. The apple trees in the yard had begun turning up their leaves in despair. The grass, such as it is, had mostly withered to a crisp and some sort of black fungus had begun to spread down the slope from the brick walk.
Rain comes in bursts now. There are days when puddles form and town packs with people not at the beach, but these are too few. New York State is in a drought-warning stage, one step below emergency.
Only July 14, the Suffolk Water Authority said the East End was in severe drought. It also said that water consumption across its whole system set a record in June; this was both in total gallons (over 11 billion) and rate of use (up to 540,000 gallons each minute). It asked its customers not to water lawns between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and to do so only every other day when “absolutely necessary.” Judging from the number of bright, green lawns, maintaining the just-right emerald color is considered an absolute necessity.
At some point last week, I was up on Two Holes of Water Road, which was named unimaginatively for the twin ponds about a quarter-mile before Swamp Road. The smaller pond, to the right if you were looking from the street, has been just about dried up for years. The larger has shrunk by at least half and upland plants were moving in where once had been reliably year-round pondwater. Another pond, not far from East Hampton Town Airport, lives in memory only now. What is odd to me, though, is that total rainfall on Long Island has been relatively steady for the last decade and a half at least.
Records of precipitation at Ronkonkoma bounce around a bit. In 2010, just over 43 inches fell; in 2023, 50 inches. At Bridgehampton, precipitation has been generally consistent for the past 95 years, with an annual average of around 46 inches. Between 1991 and 2020 the average was a smidge less than 50 inches.
All this says to me that the change in water level I saw at Two Holes of Water must have come from something else. I’m no hydrologist, though I spoke with one at a party recently, but my money would be on use. There are just too many people taking too much water out of the ground these days, so the ponds never have enough time to catch up.