Extreme drought conditions have led a central Kentucky city to declare a state of emergency.

The ongoing drought has lowered water levels in the lake that supplies Liberty and Casey County's drinking water.

You can see on this map that Casey County is in the dark red, meaning extreme drought.

The Mayor of Liberty, Sam Hadad, made the emergency declaration at a special meeting last night.

He spoke to us today about the crisis.

The lack of rain that's been going on since almost end of summer last year, actually.

So the rainfall has been way below average and, could not keep up with the consumption.

And now where the lake is down significantly, it's almost 15ft low at this point.

So it's very cryptic.

And that's the only source of water supply we have for the entire county is city.

And the county.

And we had to declare emergency so we can, decrease the amount of oil used at the same time, we can seek help and to find other source of the water supply, trying to conserve and decrease the amount of water consumed by every individual.

Basically in the outside outdoor, like, not water that they are they cannot, do a swimming pool.

It's also important no pressure washer thing like that.

So it was things which required a large amount of oil.

They cannot do basically.

And the sprinkler for flowers and for any vegetable garden and things like that, they have to do and watering basically they have to do it to minimize that amount of oil.

We can use, we can, use basically for that purpose.

The only source we have right now except, hoping and praying for more rain, the other source will be we have a green river, goes through liberty, and that's the only way we can, think about feeding into lake, some river.

But of course, we have to have Frankfort.

We already contacting Frankfort and Division of water.

Division of environment, and on, departments in Frankfort to help us in our subject to come down and study and look and see what we can do and how we can do it, or some resources for that takes a lot of financial resources, which we do not have as well.

So we need expertise and resources to finish that, project and complete that idea and fit into a lake to help sustain life and existence in this community.

We are working the second lake.

We had, since I took over to make it a ship.

And two years ago, we went that sort of fund for a new lake, and we finally managed to have $9 million for a new lake.

And so we have engineered on this one the project and awarded in the early phases.

But they're going to take some time and, hope when we get the second leg, of course, we'll have secure water supply for and and definitely.

Casey County officials will hold a fiscal court meeting tonight where they are expected to declare a state of emergency for the entire county.