Today the Orlando Business Journal scooped us (sort of) on a story we're going to have posted online later this evening. Recent droughts and water overuse have put the city on pace to face a water shortage as soon as 2013. The OBJ gets its info from a November 2010 post on The Atlantic's website, which listed Orlando as one of the top 10 big cities in the United States likely to run out of water. Hooray, we made another top 10 list.

Our story, by reporter Jeff Gore, doesn't address that issue specifically. Rather, it reports on a plume of pollution percolating in an underground aquifer beneath the city's streets – while the EPA says it's not an immediate risk to human health because this particular aquifer doesn't supply the city's drinking water, environmentalists interviewed for the story point out that, according to the St. Johns River Water Management District, withdrawals from the aquifer we do use will soon outpace its natural recharge rate. Which means we'll need to find a new source to meet our water needs. And since the other aquifer beneath our feet is heavily polluted ... well, you're smart enough to figure it out.

Armageddon!

You can read Jeff's story this evening, when it goes live on the site (or you could pick up a real dead-trees version of the Weekly out on the street today, which is being distributed around the city as I type this).