High Water

As water use hits the high mark, lack of rain has caused water reserves to dip below average.In the past week particularly, local use has increased significantly, said Wayne Lewns, chief of the county bureau of utilities. He has asked residents of the county-operated system in South Carroll to conserve water use."We are not in a panic mode," he said. "We are just asking people to curtail outdoor use."In South Carroll, Freedom District Water Treatment Facility has been operating at or above its 3 million-gallons-per-day capacity for the past week, he said.

Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke now says that with or without the support of Gov. William Donald Schaefer, he is moving his football team to Laurel."

FIRE* Union Bridge: Engines from Union Bridge and Woodsboro, Frederick County, were dispatched to rescue people stranded in a car in high water on Bucher John Road at 12:52 p.m. Sunday. The units were out for 15 minutes.

While snorkeling with his kid in Hawaii, President Clinton found himself in one of those no-win situations that politicians hate.He was taking a brief vacation, which he surely deserved. Since taking office only a few months ago, he's been on a grueling schedule filled with controversy and difficult decisions.After his trip to Japan, with the pressures of dealing with other world leaders, jet lag and eating raw fish, he wanted to spend a few days unwinding with his family on a beach or playing golf.

STE. GENEVIEVE, Mo. -- Relentlessly it rose, this muddy river, leisurely obscuring notches carved into a telephone pole to measure the silent assault yesterday of a slow-motion disaster.The worst was still a few days away in historic Ste. Genevieve, but calamity already stalked Linda Martin and her family. Swollen by rains that would not cease, the Mississippi River and its tributaries surged through levees and swirled toward record heights through a huge swath of the Midwest.As she filled sandbags to put around her house, Ms. Martin watched that telephone pole yesterday the way South Floridians watched their TV screens last August.

The Severna Park YMCA successfully defended its team title at last month's YMCA Masters National Swimming Championships in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.SPY was represented in the four-day event by 63 swimmers, all of whom played some part in capturing the men's and women's titles, as well as the overall crown with 2,149.5 points."What was nice about this year was that everybody on the team scored points and everyone came away with a medal," said SPY swimmer/head coach Nancy Brown. "Everyone swam well, and they all gave that extra effort that we needed to beat the host team."

Several local members of the North St. John's swimming team received Maryland Amateur Athletic Union awards for their outstanding achievement and leadership last week at a banquet at Martin's West.Jonathan Lang, a Loyola High student, was named the recipient of the 1992 Overall Outstanding Award, and Kurt Nordhoff, a Waverly Elementary pupil, won his second straight Swimmer of the Year Award.Other Howard County swimmers receiving age-group Swimmer of the Year honors were Melissa McCarthy of Waverly, Katie Nordhoff and Matt Otto of Patapsco Middle and Tim Koenig of Mount Hebron.

Manchester property owners Carroll and Norma Jean Swam asked the Town Council to help them solve a mystery last night.Mr. Swam said the water bill for a rental property he owns on North Main Street jumped from an average of about $50 a quarter to $623 in the first quarter of 1992. The bill for the second quarter of 1992 was $251, he said."I just would like to know what happened. I'm out some $800," he said. "I kind of feel like we've been bamboozled."When the town replaced the water meter, he said, the bill returned to normal.

VENICE, Italy -- The sirens wailed, the waters of the Adriatic Sea crept into St. Mark's Square, and a cold chill struck every Venetian who had suffered through the historic floods of 1966.It was Nov. 4 -- 25 years to the day after the unwelcome tides rose more than 6 feet above their normal level, wreaking devastation on the centuries-old buildings and monuments of this magic city built on tiny islands."Acqua alta" is Italian for "high water," the strange phenomenon that visits this decaying Renaissance capital with increasing regularity.

SHADYSIDE,Ohio -- Janet Polivka gives out photos of her daughter Kerri, inside a magnetized plastic sleeve for people to keep, dressed in her favorite dancing outfit."