The drought is taking its toll on Blount County's water supply. Maryville and Alcoa get most of their water from Little River, and Little River is running at historic lows.

Maryville uses nearly 6 million gallons [1] of water per day, most of it from Little River. (They are currently purchasing about 1 million gallons per day from the South Blount Utility District, which gets its water from the Tellico Reservoir.)

Alcoa's Little River intake is downstream from Maryville's. According to news reports, Little River's flow this week was about 42 cfs at the Maryville intake, and about 28 cfs at the downstream Alcoa intake. It is currently about 31 cfs at Townsend [2], as compared to a springtime flow of around 300 cfs.

Having waded, tubed, and fished Little River for about 40 years or so, it's about as low as I can recall ever seeing it. Fishing is out of the question, and so is tubing for the most part.

The bottom line is, everyone needs to conserve. (We've only watered our lawn once in about the last month. We're watering one more time tonight, though, before mandatory restrictions are put in place Monday morning. So, yeah, we're part of the problem, but our lawn is also nearly a complete loss from trying to be responsible all summer.)

Click read more for more photos of Little River taken yesterday...

Just below the Maryville water treatment plant. I don't have a "before" photo for comparison, but those rocks in the distance would normally be underwater, as would the gravel banks in the foreground.

Little River in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It might not look so bad in this photo, but this would normally be whitewater.

It appears the tubers are attempting to alter the stream flow to make their own chutes and passages. We noticed several of these. We're not sure this is such a good idea, or even legal.

This sad, scraggly heron near Walland is looking for a meal. The rock it's standing on would normally be underwater. In this not very good photo, you can see on the bank in the background how far down the river is below the normal water line.