After surviving Level Orange terrorist alerts and red level air-quality and UV warnings, Yellow Flu outbreaks, people were unfazed by a little drought.

Perhaps overzealous product branding leaves people wondering if "severe" or "exceptional" should be upgraded to a more forceful term.

Like, "apocalyptic."

But some know how close this past year's lack of rain really came to changing the way we think, the way we work. And the way we play.

The Triangle Area has suffered through drought conditions since last June, and 2007's hot summer only exacerbated the conditions. Much of the state remained in the worst of five drought categories until early 2008.

"What we did is put together plans to help us continue operations even if we didn't have water," Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation director Butch Kisiah said. "I don't think we were in panic mode, because you just can't do anything about the weather -- you learn to live with it."

Four inches of rain at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in April, and 13.87 inches since January, has helped to pull portions of the state out of drought for the first time since last summer according to a state report issued last week.

Had the drought continued unabated, Chapel Hill and Carrboro would have been staring at brown, dried up athletic fields through locked gates. The sounds of squeals and laughter surrounding summer swim leagues and recreational pools may have been, in some cases, silenced.

The rains of March and April may have mitigated dread for now, but local administrators are neither complacent nor unappreciative.

Ironically, the rain deficiency had local recreation administrators drowning in the challenge of scheduling already overused playing fields, and holding their breath as they hawked long-range forecasts.

"First of all, (our fields) are loved to death, so they get overused and the turf gets stressed," Kisiah said, "especially at Cedar Falls Park where there's sort of a conglomeration of turfs, and it's difficult to get that turf to come back. The turf at Homestead Park does a little better because it's a hybrid Bermuda that runs and will eventually fill itself in. At Scroggs, we're in the same boat as at Homestead."

While Chapel Hill used some well water during the worst stages of the drought, fields are still in dire disrepair.

"We're going to have to do some things to get the fields back into shape," Kisiah said. "If we can't get the fields playable by this fall, we may have to cancel the fall softball and soccer season on those fields. I'm not ready to do that yet, but we'll have to make that call sometime over the summer."

"The fields are still questionable," he added. "OWASA has gone back to level one restrictions, which means we can water one half-inch a week, which isn't a lot of water for athletic fields. So, of course, any additional rain we might get is also terrific."

Kisiah said that, without intervention, use of the fields could pose a hazard.

"The fields simply won't be safe for people to play on," he said. "There would be ruts in the field and places that would be dug out. We just don't know if we can get it to where we have a uniform surface or not. The last thing we want to do is to get somebody hurt."

Carrboro Recreation and Parks administrator Dennis Joines said his agency's use of athletic fields is often the result of partnerships.

"We use a lot of schools' facilities for fields," Joines explained.

Carrboro Public Works Department Landscaping and Grounds Supervisor Paul Hellwig said the most heavily used portions of Carrboro's Hank Anderson and Wilson parks -- the baseball and softball infields -- don't need much water.

"We've got a good sand-clay base down, and we don't have any turf on our infields that we have to worry about," Hellwig said. "We've got four fields at Anderson Park and another one at Wilson Park, and all of them have (dirt) infields."

Hellwig said that fields were graded for better drainage last winter.


WETTER, AND WISER

As for fields shared by Carrboro and the local schools, however, overuse has become a problem.

"We've got sort of a partnership between us, the school system, and the county to play soccer (near Smith Middle School), and that field is just like dirt," Hellwig said. "We're in discussions about what can be done about it."

Hellwig stressed that Bermuda grass needs time to heal.

"It's one thing to use it in the spring," he said, "but it's another to play on it in the fall too so that it can't repair itself.

As for the wider football and soccer field at Anderson Park, Hellwig said, Carrboro smartly lets nature take its course.

"We don't officially schedule much more than football up on those fields," he explained, "but we don't take care of weeds there. We don't use herbicides, and as it turns out, sometimes the weeds are tougher than the grass."

Kisiah said his agency is warier for the recent water scare.

"We've sort of dodged a bullet here, but we're going to have to put some money back into our fields," he said. "We've lost an awful lot of turf. We'll have to take a look at artificial turf, different types of turf that are drought resistant, and whether we have wells to irrigate with or not. If we don't, do we start really limiting the amount of use we allow on the fields? It's really going to affect the services we provide."

The notion of limiting use would hit recreation groups not specifically affiliated with the town particularly hard. Groups already scrambling for playing space are looking for ways to team with town agencies.

"Rainbow and Triangle United (soccer) have come forward and will help put up some money to put artificial turf at Homestead Park," Kisiah said, "and we're trying to work that out."

Kisiah said he is closely monitoring recent news reports of potential chemical problems with artificial turf's rubber-pellet infilling.

However, Kisiah said work wouldn't be put off on completion of the natural-grass Southern Community Park.

"We have to lay the sod and get it established," Kisiah said. "... We can't do that until we finish the soccer fields. That's six acres of soccer fields, and we have irrigation out there. We'll pump off of OWASA. Still, we can't go over a half-inch a week. For new turf, that's not enough water."


POOLING EFFORTS

If a drought's repercussions would be severe for fields, imagine how empty pools would go over for area swimmers, not to mention divers.

With the pool at the Chapel Hill Community Center just having recently reopened after facility renovations, Kisiah was trying to stay ahead of the game.

"We continued to operate that pool by going to a well at the town operations center," he said. "We had that well certified as potable drinking water ... and then we got the town's 2,200-gallon flusher truck, had it sanitized ... and brought (water) over to the Community Center to top off the pool three times a week.

"Between evaporation, spilling and splashing, and from washing the filters, it took 6,000 gallons of water a week."

At Level I restrictions, existing pool waters can be topped off with OWASA water, which means that Chapel Hill is back to normal operations at the Community Center.

"We had also started making well water runs to the A.D. Clark Pool at Hargraves Community Center," Kisiah pointed out, "and we're finishing that with OWASA water, and it'll open on May 24."

Ben Allred, Manager of the UNC Faculty-Staff Recreation Association (the Farm) located off Barbee Chapel Road in southeastern Chapel Hill, said that his facility would have closed their popular pool facilities had the drought continued.

"There's no way we could open this summer if we were still in Stage Three," he said. "We did go ahead and drill two more wells out here. We have four now. But all four combined wouldn't give us a flow rate that would sustain us."

Chapel Hill Tennis Club manager Alan Rader also was thinking ahead.

"We didn't drain our pool this year," he said. "We were going to have to top off the water throughout the year, and that would cost us around $15,000-$18,000. Now we're just topping the pools off, but because they've loosened the restrictions, we're using OWASA water."

Water has literally been integral to the construction of the pools at the new town aquatic center at Homestead Park.

"Within the next few weeks, we'll be ready to fill up the pools at the new aquatic center," Kisiah said. "The plaster application on the walls of those pools actually cures under water, so we have to fill it to allow the plaster to cure. We won't filter that water, but when the time comes that we have go to more stringent water restrictions again, say level two, that would still allow us to top the pool off that had already been filled."