PARIS, Ill. (AP) - In pockets of rural Illinois, families who rely on wells for the water they need to run businesses, tend the farm or wash their clothes are finding underground water sources are dry.

Most of Illinois has gotten less than normal rain since July, and the National Weather Service suggests drought conditions could persist here through the summer.

Without rain, lake levels are dropping and underground streams aren't flowing. Wells, especially shallow ones, are emptying faster than homeowners can buy water to fill them up.

"I've been here since 1976, and this is the worst I've ever seen it," said Rick Craig, superintendent of the Paris Water Plant.

Don Keys is one of those farmers watching the skies over his family's farm in Edgar County. He's getting ready to plant his 55th crop and remembers few dry spells like the current one.

"Usually in the spring around here, you dig post holes for a fence and the holes would fill up with water," Keys said. "Right now, there is no water."

His son, Joe Keys, owns the fertilizer business next door and is sending a tanker to Paris regularly to buy water - water he used to draw from the ground at a pumping station. This is the time of year when he needs water most, thousands and thousands of gallons of it to apply fertilizer on his customers' fields.

"We've got to have water to do business," Joe Keys said.

Every neighbor Don and Joe Keys have along County Road 1900 North is hurting for water. But they note having to haul in water now is far less of a concern than the ominous possibility of summer-long drought.

"People just don't realize what a thin line we're on right now, how close we are to a very precarious position," Joe Keys said. "Everything will be fine if we could just get a good, steady rain. But we've been saying that since last July."

Craig, the water plant supervisor, says during a normal, rainy Illinois March, he would sell 2,000 gallons of water a week at the plant. He's seen that swell to more than 100,000 gallons in some recent weeks. Companies that haul water for hire are struggling to keep up with calls from people with dry wells.

"It's a losing battle with wells because anything you put into the well is just going to seep back out right now," said Charlie Dunne of Dunne Water Hauling in Charleston.

Despite the losing battle, Dunne's company is hauling water to an ever-growing list of customers in a quickly widening service area. "You gotta have water," he said.

Dunne normally needs two or three loads of water a year to keep the well at his own home functioning. Now, he's trucking water there about once a month. Usually people need a little extra water in the winter, but it's very unusual to have this many well problems in late March, Dunne said.

But state climatologist Jim Angel said changes can come suddenly in Illinois.

"You know how the weather in Illinois is," said Angel, who works for the Illinois State Water Survey in Champaign. "One day we're talking about drought, and the next week we're talking about flooding. There's always danger in putting too much stock in forecasts."