Lauderdale County Alabama

Drought prompts restrictions on water

The West Lauderdale Water Authority has mandated that its 4,750 customers refrain from all nonessential uses of water, including watering lawns. The Central Heights-based utility serves much of western Lauderdale outside the city of Florence.

Customers who violate the call for conservation could have their water shut off, officials said.

“We’re not going to be driving around looking for people watering, washing cars and using water in ways they are not supposed to, but if we happen to see someone violating the conservation notice, we will ask them to stop,” said Linda Lack, secretary for West Lauderdale Water.

“If we see them violating the conservation notice again, we will turn off their water at the meter,” she said.

A voluntary call for water conservation continues for the 3,100 customers of the East Lauderdale Water Authority, which serves much of eastern Lauderdale County outside of the towns of Killen, Lexington and Rogersville.

Ronnie Woodard, manager of East Lauderdale Water, said the conservation notice that was set to expire Wednesday was extended after expected rain bypassed much of the Shoals.

Only scattered showers and thunderstorms were reported.

Some customers of both the rural Lauderdale utilities who live in higher elevations or along smaller waterlines have been left without water at times this week.

“Until we get some good, widespread rain, we are going to need people to keep conserving water,” Woodard said.

Jennifer Schuller, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Huntsville, said no widespread rain is expected in northwest Alabama in the foreseeable future.

State climatologist John Christy said all of north Alabama, except the extreme northwest corner, is in early stages of a drought, according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor report that will be released at 7:30 a.m. today.

Lack and Woodard said water shortage for the Lauderdale systems stems in part from May 25 thunderstorms that caused Florence Utilities to temporarily reduce the amount of water it was able to pump. The storms damaged a main waterline in Florence and shut off electrical power of a water treatment plant in the city for part of the day. East and West Lauderdale water authorities purchase water from Florence.

“When Florence started running low on water back in May, we had to rely on the water we had stored in our tanks to supply our customers for a day or so and that really dropped our tank levels,” Lack said. “Then the drought hit right after the thunderstorms and we have not been able to get our tank levels back up.

1843-1850 Lauderdale County (Alabama) Circuit Court Record Book ...

The Florence-Lauderdale Public Library's staff chose to scan and digitize one of the books, which contains 474 pages, as a pilot project. Employees, working on a part-time basis, needed six weeks to scan the book and three days to upload it to the library's website at http://flpl.org . the calculated cost of the pilot project, which includes employee hours worked and maintenance of the software program, is $1,200. The Library now seeks grants to digitize additional volumes.

Lauderdale County, Alabama, annotated index to Chancery Court records, Equity record book C, 1827-1830

Lauderdale County, Alabama, 1907 census of Confederate soldiers : indexed and compiled from Alabama State Archives microfilm

Lauderdale County, Alabama, a study in county government and administration

Lauderdale County [Alabama]

Sharp Family - Patrick County, Virginia to Lauderdale County, Alabama and Beyond