Trickle down: The Moormans' last gasp? When mandatory water
restrictions went into effect on August 23, some locals wondered
why the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority continued to dump
100,000 gallons of this area's most precious fluid each day from
the Sugar Hollow Reservoir into the Moormans River. Authority
executive director Larry Tropea said the water release was
necessary to supplement the river's natural flow and that the
amount had been reduced from 400,000 gallons because of the
drought. "There's an environmental balance that's got to be
struck. If not," Tropea said on August 29, "the Moormans dries
up." Now, it looks like the Moormans is going to dry up. On
September 12, the Authority announced it was ending voluntary
in-stream releases into the Moormans and from the South Fork
Rivanna reservoir into the Rivanna River, where two million
gallons a day had been released, down from eight million before
the drought worsened. For Friends of the Moormans, that was a
grim day. "People don't realize the rel