THEIR OFFICIAL DISCHARGE FIGURES...

     Figures reflecting the flow of the river...and the discharge of water...in Mills River, the City of Hendersonville's primary source for water, indicate the river had again fallen to extremely low levels...levels, based on recent satements by city officials, far too low to remove the mandatory water restrictions now in place...on the 60 thousand PLUS customers on the City's water system.

    The flow, or discharge, level of Mills River had reached a peak of over 1600 cubic feet per second at the peak of the rainfall from Tropical Storm Fay...but by thia Friday had fallen to only 39 cubic feet per second....and by the end of the weekend, had fallen to 36 c.f.s. 

     Prior to Fay, the French Broad River had reached it's lowest flow level since 1885...as the drought, dating back to the Winter of 2007, seems to continue.  Hendersonville's official United States National Weather Service observation station at WHKP reported rainfall DEFICIT for Hendersonville through August 2008...of over 12 inches of precipitation (rain, melted sleet, ice and snow)... that's BELOW average precipitation for Hendersonville.

     Forecasters had said it would take "tropical weather" systems and volumes to relieves the drought...but so far, even the "tropical systems" aren't much help for Hendersonville.

  The Mills River