News-Record.com

Ironically, a day earlier, Gov. Mike Easley announced that the statewide drought has taken a turn for the worse and may well last until February.

All 100 counties have been gripped by the dry spell and all but two are suffering from the top three classifications of drought — severe, extreme or exceptional.

Guilford County qualifies as extreme.

So extreme that Lake Higgins Watershed Park in Summerfield will close beginning Monday. The lake, which serves as Greensboro's reservoir, is dropping nearly 3 inches a day and is 43 inches below normal.

It could get worse.

Forecasters predict a dry winter, which in turn could lay the parched groundwork for an even more severe drought next summer.

We're at the point where we're cheering for new hurricanes.

City Water Resources Director Allan Williams says it is conceivable that the state's long dry season could become so serious that neighboring communities could stop selling water to Greensboro, one way the city has helped weather the rain shortage.

Still, some folks simply don't seem to get it.

And the guy using a sprinkler to do his dirty work is hardly alone.

Despite similarly desperate conditions in the Triangle, a Wake Forest homeowners association not only requires neat lawns, but green ones.

Margot's Pond community residents who fail to maintain pristine landscapes are warned to shape up or else ... a private lawn care company will be called in to do the requisite work and the recalcitrant homeowner will get the bill.

The association cut its members no slack for dry weather.

"While the Board is aware of the inconvenience presented by the heat and water restrictions," the homeowners board said in a letter to residents, "we believe that having neatly landscaped lawns of grass is of the utmost importance to our community."

In other words, despite the need for water for other, more mundane purposes, like drinking, green lawns are too important to sacrifice for such a minor inconvenience as a drought.

Let 'em buy bottled water.

It also cut loose one of its landscaping committee members for daring to tell a local TV station, on the record, that he thought the rules were too tough.

In light of all the negative publicity, the Grass Poobahs at Margot's Pond have since said they might extend the deadline for deadbeat landscapers to get their act together.

What wonderful humanitarians.

To put it as delicately as possible, this is stupid.

There is a drought. It is expected to last, like, forever. Or at least until Carolina and Duke next meet. In a basketball game.

Responsible adults should be expected under such circumstances to act responsibly.

As for the guy in Greensboro who insists on using the sprinkler to keep his driveway and stroller nice and moist, I'm still mulling whether to give him up to the water cops.

I might actually talk to him first, as good neighbors should.

But one more false move on his part and I'm singin' like a jaybird.