Lake Lanier has 3 months of water storage left-Main water supply

[BERIGAN]

What's funny, is after a really dry summer, we on the southside of town have had a decent amount of rain, doesn't look like a terrible drought outside my windows. But, uncontrolled growth, mixed with everything from power plants, to yes Mussels seem to be setting us up for a disaster. Article I read last week(That said we could run out of water by Feb,) said we could have a Katrina like crisis here!

Lake Lanier has three months of water storage left

By STACY SHELTON

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 10/11/07

Lake Sidney Lanier, metro Atlanta's main source of water, has about three months of storage left, according to state and federal officials.

That's three months before there's not enough water for more than 3 million metro Atlantans to take showers, flush their toilets and cook. Three months before there's not enough water in parts of the Chattahoochee River for power plants to make the steam necessary to generate electricity. Three months before part of the river runs dry.

"We've never experienced this situation before," state Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch said of the record-breaking drought and fast-falling lake.

In two weeks, Couch plans to give Gov. Sonny Perdue a list of options to further restrict water use by businesses and industries, along with an analysis of potential water savings and estimated job losses. Some exemptions to the state's ban on outdoor watering in north Georgia could end, including those applied to water-dependent businesses such as car washes, pressure washing companies and landscapers. Couch's staff is still working on the details.

She said she fully expects an economic hit if substantial rain doesn't fall soon and the emergency actions are taken.

"There has to be a balance between determining how much water we can conserve against how much lost jobs and lost economy there is," Couch said. "You don't do that lightly."

Landscapers already have suffered. Days after the outdoor ban was ordered Sept. 28, Mary Kay Woodworth of the Urban Agriculture Council trade group said landscapers' phones around the region stopped ringing. "Immediately, employees were laid off. Contracts waiting on signatures — from $3,000 jobs to $150,000 installations — were canceled."

Other heavy water users are considering their options. A Pepsico Inc. plant that produces Gatorade, which is the biggest water user in the city of Atlanta, is figuring out ways to cut down further on its use in the next 30 days. Coca-Cola is waiting to see what restrictions might be imposed at its Atlanta syrup plant, but has already cut back as part of a corporate water conservation plan.

Some water providers are asking big users like manufacturers to voluntarily cut back and are making emergency plans to install equipment to pump water from unprecedented depths of Lanier and the Chattahoochee.

Fate depends on Corps

How bad things could get depends on rain, and the forecast is not promising. October is normally the year's driest month, and climatologists say another dry, warm winter is ahead.

Metro Atlanta's water fate also depends largely on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that owns and operates Buford Dam and the 38,000-acre lake that sits behind it, bordered by Gwinnett, Hall and Forysth Counties. This month, the Corps has released from Lanier more than four times as much water as flows in from the Chattahoochee and other feeder streams. But that's far less than last month, when the Corps released 35 times as much water out of Lanier than flowed in.

More than a billion gallons leave the lake every day, more than twice the amount metro Atlanta uses. Much of it flows past the city into West Point Lake, another federal reservoir near LaGrange, then along the Alabama border and eventually to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

Pat Stevens, an environmental planner for the Atlanta Regional Commission who regularly keeps tabs on how much water is available for Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, DeKalb and other metro Atlanta governments, said the Corps' "wastes water unnaturally."

"When you move into a drought like we've moved into, you'll drain the system," Stevens said.

The Corps' water releases are based on two key requirements: the minimum flow needed to operate Plant Scholtz, Gulf Power's small coal-fired facility just below Lake Seminole, and federal mandates to protect two mussel species in a Florida river.

If the Chattahoochee were undammed and running freely, Mother Nature would be providing only half the water the Corps is sending, Corps officials have said.

Val Perry Jr., a homeowner and officer of the Lake Lanier Association, told the Corps last week that "If there were no dams at all, some mussels would die and [the species would] not become extinct. ... Does a couple of mussels trump 5 million people? What I hear from the Corps is that the answer to that is yes."

Together with Lanier, four other federal lakes on the Chattahoochee combine to send water toward the Apalachicola River in Florida, which is formed by the waters of Georgia's Chattahoochee and Flint rivers. But no one knows whether the mussels — the endangered fat threeridge and threatened purple bankclimber — actually need the 3 billion gallons they get every day.

"The real big question is how low can you go to not allow the species to go down the slippery slope of extinction?" said Sandra Tucker, a field supervisor with the wildlife service in Georgia. "Those are things we just really don't know."

But even if the mussels could survive with less water, the coal plant could not, said Lynn Erickson, a Gulf Power spokeswoman. The plant, which opened in 1953 and produces enough electricity to power as many as 19,000 homes, had to lower its water withdrawal pipe on the Apalachicola River about 25 years ago. To go lower probably wouldn't be cost effective, Erickson said.

"This is a small plant in the whole scheme of things," Erickson said. "But it's a critical piece of the whole system." It ensures reliability for an entire region that includes Tallahassee, southeast Alabama and southwest Georgia.

State and regional representatives, including Couch and Georgia's congressional delegation, have been asking the Corps to reconsider its releases for the power plant and the mussels for more than a year. So far, the answer has been no.

"We are required to maintain [the minimum flow]," said Corps spokeswoman Lisa Coghlan. "As we march on, we're going to seriously be looking at our emergency operations and how we provide relief."

The Corps last month predicted Lanier, in the worst-case scenario, could drop another 19 feet by the end of the year to set a new historic low that would threaten metro Atlanta's drinking supply sometime next year.

Mark Crisp, a water expert in Atlanta with the national consulting firm C.H. Guernsey & Co., has said for years that metro Atlanta is asking too much from Lanier. Most of the region's population — and one-third of the state's population — relyon the smallest river basin in the Georgia. In fact, it's the largest metropolitan region in the country depending on a river so small.

As Couch put it, "All our eggs are in one basket."

Now Crisp's warnings seem even more prescient. The active storm season that rescued the state during the last drought — from 1998 to 2002 — is unlikely.

"We're already on the downside of the hurricane season so that hope and a prayer has pretty much gone away," said Crisp, whose clients include customers buying electricity generated at Lanier's Buford Dam. "At this point, as bad as it has gotten, we've got to start thinking about the doomsday, at least saying to each other, 'How are we going to handle it if it comes?'"

Stevens, the ARC's environmental planner, said she "doesn't even want to think about" the fallout if Lanier drops to 31 feet below its full level.

Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said the state has fought in the tri-state legal water wars and has restricted outdoor watering, with the worst-case scenario in mind.

"The Level 4 declaration is just the latest step in asking Georgians to do their part to conserve as much of our existing resources as possible."

If that's not enough, the first sign of trouble for metro Atlantans could be lowered water pressure, as the water systems strain to pull water out of a dwindling river and lake.

Corps acknowledged mistake

Compounding this year's problem was a huge mistake by the Corps in 2006.

That spring, just as the drought was beginning, the Corps released billions of gallons of additional water from Lanier to the Apalachicola River, for the spawning season of the threatened Gulf sturgeon. So few of the prehistoric fish remain that a federal biologist in Florida has estimated fewer than 10 females are able to spawn in any given year.

The Corps discovered it had relied on a faulty gauge to measure Lanier's level — overestimating the amount of water left in the lake by nearly 2 feet. That meant the Corps had accidentally released 22 billion gallons of water: enough to supply metro Atlanta's needs for about a month and a half.

EPD Director Couch first sent out a warning in June of last year that metro Atlanta's drinking water supply was in jeopardy, thanks to the Corps' releases, which she said were twice the amount needed for the threatened fish. The Corps has since acknowledged it released more water than needed.

That same month, the state sued the Corps, seeking to reduce the amount of water headed across the border to Florida. A flurry of hearings last summer failed to resolve the matter. Florida and Alabama also have complaints about the Corps' management of the Chattahoochee River. A 17-year legal battle is wending its way through the federal courts.

But, even if the courts decide to reduce the releases, and the region is deluged with rain, that may only delay the inevitable, some say, because metro Atlanta is outgrowing its water sources.

'Our culture has to change'

An $8 million water plan for metro Atlanta completed in 2003 is based on the generally accepted assumption that this region can remove an average of 705 million gallons of water a day from Lanier and the upper Chattahoochee. But state officials have long thought that the area won't reach that level of water use until 2030.

Metro Atlanta is already more than halfway there, and over the next 25 years another 1.6 million people are expected to share the water.

And the original assumption was based on some major "ifs:" if additional reservoirs are built; if aggressive conservation measures are enacted; if additional water is pumped from Lake Allatoona to the Chattahoochee basin; if metro Atlanta is allowed to use more of the water in Lanier instead of sending it downstream to Alabama and Florida.

Given the current drought, those underlying assumptions are suspect.

Crisp now estimates metro Atlanta could reach its water limit as early as 2018, assuming continued growth in population.

"Our culture has to change," said Crisp, who lives on Allatoona, which has dropped to levels not often seen at this time of year. "We have been a water-rich region all of our lives, never having to worry about water. ... The attention that is paid to water goes away as soon as we start having rain again.

"We're going to have another drought after this one," he said. "When we can't guess, but we can be assured we'll have another drought that's actually worse than this one. ... With that in mind, our planners have to start looking at this in terms of how many more families, how many more businesses, how many more gallons of water can we allocate out of the Chattahoochee River."

Staff writers Matt Kempner and Duane Stanford contributed to this story.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/sto...age_tab_newstab

Edited October 11, 2007 by BERIGAN

[Chuck Nessa]

Drink beer.

[BERIGAN]

Drink beer.

And piss in the lake?

[MoGrubb]

Y'all're up shit creek.

Edited October 11, 2007 by MoGrubb

[BERIGAN]

Y'all're up shit creek.

Yep. And I am beginning to think with what happened in N.O. and now in Atlanta, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is loaded with idiots.....

Edited October 11, 2007 by BERIGAN

[AllenLowe]

you never miss your water...

[sheldonm]

...wow, I just thought all this stuff would last forever!

[Jazzmoose]

Don't fall for it, Berigan...it's just a liberal plot to convince you that global warming is real!!!

[BERIGAN]

Don't fall for it, Berigan...it's just a liberal plot to convince you that global warming is real!!!

You know, you must be right! Never heard of a drought before global warming! :crazy:

[BERIGAN]

Don't fall for it, Berigan...it's just a liberal plot to convince you that global warming is real!!!

You know, you must be right! Never heard of a drought before global warming! :

Edited October 12, 2007 by BERIGAN

[Brownian Motion]

Don't fall for it, Berigan...it's just a liberal plot to convince you that global warming is real!!!

You know, you must be right! Never heard of a drought before global warming! :

Global warming will cause climate changes, but it's too early to predict the nature of those changes. A sobering scenario might see the US climate become something like Australia's, where deserts develop east of the Mississippi, and a sizable percentage of the interior land becomes uninhabitable.

Edited October 12, 2007 by Brownian Motion

[BERIGAN]

The brilliant Army Corp of "engineers" are much closer to being the dumbest dumbfucks in the history of dumbfucks!!!! Water level really low???? increase flow of water out of the lake then!!! I laugh, but people are already losing jobs here, and that is just the beginning of problems for people in and around Atlanta......

New limits on water use 'very likely'

By MATT KEMPNER , GAYLE WHITE

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 10/18/07

Responding to an ultimatum from Gov. Sonny Perdue, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Wednesday it is looking into releasing less water from Lake Lanier, just days after the Corps began sending billions more gallons downstream.

But Perdue said time's up: The state will ask the courts this week to force the Corps to leave more water in Lanier, the main drinking water supply for drought-starved metro Atlanta.

"Georgia is out of time," Perdue said in a news release.

Meanwhile, the director of Georgia's Environmental Protection Division said "it's very likely" that even tighter watering restrictions will be needed in North Georgia, regardless of whether the Corps cuts its Lanier releases. The large releases are being made primarily to protect endangered mussels and support a power plant downstream in Florida.

"Our water crisis will not be over," said Carol Couch, the director.

Among the options that she said she may propose to Perdue early next week are restrictions on commercial and industrial users.

She said local water utilities could be given mandates for percentage reductions but might be allowed to prioritize which categories of customers have to make the steepest cuts. She cautioned that the measures could result in job losses and other economic damage.

She also said she will present Perdue with a plan to encourage voluntary conservation of indoor water use. The state has already imposed an outdoor watering ban in North Georgia.

In addition, the state is preparing emergency response plans in case some communities face disruptions in their water supplies, Couch said. The possibilities include bringing emergency supplies of water to meet the needs of hospitals.

"We do need to prepare for all options," she said.

Late last week, Perdue gave the Corps until Wednesday evening to respond to his demand to cut the water releases from Lanier.

Instead, with other reservoirs in the system depleted, the Corps this week sharply increased releases.

But late Wednesday afternoon, the Corps sent an electronic letter to the state saying it is considering options to meet various needs in case "the drought conditions continue into 2008 as predicted."

Col. Byron Jorns, the commander for the Corps' Mobile district, wrote that "due to the severe nature and predicted duration of the continuing drought" the Corps has begun discussions with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for protecting endangered species.

Maj. Daren Payne, the Corps' deputy district commander, said in an interview that "it's a process that will take a while."

Even if Fish and Wildlife agrees to smaller releases, he said, a nuclear power plant, industries and other municipalities downstream need water.

"It's about more than just the mussels," Payne said.

One of the main reasons for the Corps' large releases from Lanier is a small coal-fired plant downstream in Florida operated by Gulf Power, a sister company to Georgia Power. The utility said it is in discussion with the Corps about reducing its water needs.

But the mussels have become a flashpoint for a metro area watching its water supply dissipate.

Georgia's congressional delegation introduced legislation Tuesday that would amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973 to allow for emergency drought relief.

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, who held a news conference Wednesday, said the state must "move the Corps in the direction of understanding that the consumption of water for humans is far more important than a species downstream."

Perdue called the Corps' response to the drought "nonsensical."

"Litigation is never how I choose to deal with issues, but the Corps has left us no choice," he said in a news release. Perdue is in Asia on an economic development mission and expected to return to Georgia on Friday.

Currently, the Corps projects Lanier's level will drop nearly a foot and a half each week, falling well below its historic low by the end of the year.

The EPD's Couch said at that rate, Lanier's readily available supply of drinking water would be exhausted in 81 days, though emergency measures could allow water to be pumped at lower levels.

But the Corps' Payne said that even if Lanier were to fall more than 20 feet from its current level, "we will still have a significant volume of water in the lake."

Tom MacKenzie, a spokesman for the Southeast region of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the service is "more than willing to respond" if the Corps comes up with a specific proposal for changing the flow.

"It takes a huge amount of number crunching" to determine the impact of a change, MacKenzie said. "It's not like creating a spreadsheet and flipping a number and finding out how many mussels you kill."

Meanwhile, state officials hope to rally public support for water austerity.

"This crisis will not end any time soon," Couch said, "so now is the time for all Georgians to come together as families and communities, certainly to be good stewards but also to understand that we are in a crisis situation."

Staff writer James Salzer contributed to this article.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/sto...age_tab_newstab

Edited October 19, 2007 by BERIGAN

[Guy Berger]

Is there a rational scheme for water pricing in the Atlanta area?

Guy

[BERIGAN]

Is there a rational scheme for water pricing in the Atlanta area?

Guy

A rational scheme? Not quite sure what you mean by that....Are you saying it's too cheap per gallon? I guess we could up the price some, but I feel that would be too little too late...Most people haven't been able to water their lawns for most of this year. Can't wash cars anymore, and probably won't be able to til next year at the very earliest. We can take shorter showers, but most people don't want to stop flushing toilets. For many a year all you can get is low flow shower heads, and toilets. Businesses on the other hand... at least up til a few weeks ago, I would see them running their sprinklers all the time to water a 2, 3 foot strip of grass

We are a city growing faster than any other large city in the nation, and no one has been planning for what can/will happen with this kind of growth. Plus, Gatorade is the largest water user in Atlanta. And as I have mentioned a few times, the Army Corp of Engineers seem hell bent on draining the lake, or at least pumping it to a point water pressure will be non existent. For all the screw ups mentioned in the last article, they screwed up last year as well and dumped billions and billions of gallons of water to help some sturgeon, not realizing that they had measured the water level incorrectly!

We are in a drought, a terrible one. We have been in and out of droughts for most of this century, and you just think that people at the state and Federal level would have a clue on how to handle this situation better.

[BERIGAN]

So reassuring.... And the Corps of Engineers show again that to say they are dumber than dirt, is truly an insult to dirt....

No Backup if Atlanta's Faucets Run Dry

Email this Story

Oct 19, 5:14 PM (ET)

By GREG BLUESTEIN

(AP) An exposed lake bed is shown at Lake Lanier in Buford, Ga., Friday, Oct. 12, 2007. Rivers...

ATLANTA (AP) - With the South in the grip of an epic drought and its largest city holding less than a 90-day supply of water, officials are scrambling to deal with the worst-case scenario: What if Atlanta's faucets really do go dry?

So far, no real backup plan exists. And there are no quick fixes among suggested solutions, which include piping water in from rivers in neighboring states, building more regional reservoirs, setting up a statewide recycling system or even desalinating water from the Atlantic Ocean.

"It's amazing that things have come to this," said Ray Wiedman, owner of an Atlanta landscaper business. "Everybody knew the growth was coming. We haven't had a plan for all the people coming here?"

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue seems to be pinning his hopes on a two-pronged approach: urging water conservation and reducing water flowing out of federally controlled lakes.

(AP) Tony Davis uses a metal detector scan the exposed lake bed at West Bank Park on Lake Lanier in...

Full Image

Perdue's office on Friday asked a Florida federal judge to force the Army Corps of Engineers to curb the amount of water draining from Georgia reservoirs into Alabama and Florida. And Georgia's environmental protection director is drafting proposals for more water restrictions.

But that may not be enough to stave off the water crisis. More than a quarter of the Southeast is covered by an "exceptional" drought - the National Weather Service's worst drought category. The Atlanta area, with a population of 5 million, is smack in the middle of the affected region, which extends like a dark cloud over most of Tennessee, Alabama and the northern half of Georgia, as well as parts of North and South Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia.

State officials warn that Lake Lanier, a 38,000-acre north Georgia reservoir that supplies more than 3 million residents with water, is already less than three months from depletion. Smaller reservoirs are dropping even lower, forcing local governments to consider rationing.

State water managers say there is more water available in the lake's reserves. But tapping into it would require the use of barges, emergency pumps and longer water lines. And some lawmakers fear if the lake is drained that low, it may be impossible to refill.

The Corps, which manages the water in the region, stresses there's no reason to think Atlanta will soon run out of water.

"We're so far away from that, nobody's doing a contingency plan," said Major Daren Payne, the deputy commander of the Corps' Mobile office. "Quite frankly, there's enough water left to last for months. We've got a serious drought, there's no doubt about it, anytime you deplete your entire storage pool and tap into the reserve."

But, he said, any calls to stockpile bottled water would be "very premature."

Still, some academics and politicians are proposing contingency plans in case the situation worsens.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said the region should explore piping in additional sources of water - possibly from the Tennessee or Savannah rivers. She even suggested desalinating sea water from Georgia's Atlantic coast.

"We need to look beyond our borders," she said.

(AP) Map shows drought conditions in U.S.; 2c x 4 inches; 96.3 mm x 101.6 mm

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Former Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat who was defeated in 2002, told reporters this week that he had planned to offer grants to fix leaks that waste millions of gallons of water each year. He also said he planned to build three new state reservoirs in north and west Georgia to help insulate the state from a future water crisis. But those plans died when he left office.

"Los Angeles added 1 million people without increasing their water supply," he told reporters. "And if Los Angeles can do it, I'll tell you Georgia can."

It seems the idea of building state reservoirs is gaining steam in the Legislature as Georgia's battle with the Corps over federal reservoirs heats up.

Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said he favors building more regional reservoirs shared by multiple communities to harness the 50 trillion gallons of water that fall over Georgia each year.

"You can see that if we can just manage the rainfall and utilize that and make sure that we have abundant storage for it, we can take care of our needs well into the future," said Cagle, a Republican from Gainesville, the largest city on Lake Lanier.

Some academics say Georgia should start using more "purple water" - waste water that is partially treated and can be used for irrigation, fire fighting and uses other than drinking. That would conserve lake water and help replenish the water-supply system.

Such measures could make Georgia "drought-proof," said Todd Rasmussen, a professor of hydrology and water resources at the University of Georgia.

"People have got to start thinking in this direction," said Rasmussen. "You can't wear out water. It's clearly an opportunity that needs to be explored."

The drought has led to extreme conservation measures.

Virtually all outdoor watering across was banned across the northern half of the state, restaurants were asked to serve water only at a customer's request and the governor called on Georgians to take shorter showers. Carol Couch, the state's environmental director, said it's "very likely" new limits on water usage are needed.

Scorching summer temperatures and a drier-than-normal hurricane season fueled the drought. State climatologist David Stooksbury said it will take months of above average rainfall to replenish the system. He is now predicting the drought could worsen if "La Nina" conditions develop and bring little winter rainfall.

"I tell people we need 40 days and 40 nights," he said with a sigh.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071019/D8SCHTI00.html

Edited October 20, 2007 by BERIGAN

[Brownian Motion]

We are in a drought, a terrible one. We have been in and out of droughts for most of this century, and you just think that people at the state and Federal level would have a clue on how to handle this situation better.

Water shortages over the course of an entire century are not droughts. They're climate. You're overbuilt.

[BERIGAN]

We are in a drought, a terrible one. We have been in and out of droughts for most of this century, and you just think that people at the state and Federal level would have a clue on how to handle this situation better.

Water shortages over the course of an entire century are not droughts. They're climate. You're overbuilt.

We are overbuilt...but when I said this century, I meant THIS century, 21st... not the last 100 years. I guess I should have said most of this decade, or since the the 00's... since 20 ought 1, til ought 7!

[Guy Berger]

Is there a rational scheme for water pricing in the Atlanta area?

Guy

A rational scheme? Not quite sure what you mean by that....Are you saying it's too cheap per gallon? I guess we could up the price some, but I feel that would be too little too late...Most people haven't been able to water their lawns for most of this year. Can't wash cars anymore, and probably won't be able to til next year at the very earliest. We can take shorter showers, but most people don't want to stop flushing toilets. For many a year all you can get is low flow shower heads, and toilets. Businesses on the other hand... at least up til a few weeks ago, I would see them running their sprinklers all the time to water a 2, 3 foot strip of grass

We are a city growing faster than any other large city in the nation, and no one has been planning for what can/will happen with this kind of growth. Plus, Gatorade is the largest water user in Atlanta. And as I have mentioned a few times, the Army Corp of Engineers seem hell bent on draining the lake, or at least pumping it to a point water pressure will be non existent. For all the screw ups mentioned in the last article, they screwed up last year as well and dumped billions and billions of gallons of water to help some sturgeon, not realizing that they had measured the water level incorrectly!

We are in a drought, a terrible one. We have been in and out of droughts for most of this century, and you just think that people at the state and Federal level would have a clue on how to handle this situation better.

Beri,

What I meant was... I know that in California and lots of other places, water is heavily subsidized to at least some users. (In Cal and Israel, farmers pay an tiny fraction of what others do.) I do not know if Atlanta residents pay the actual cost of the water they use, but yes, some sort of hike in the price of water would help alleviate some of the problems with the shortage and also potentially generate a market-driven solution to the water shortage.

Guy

[porcy62]

The access to fresh water will be the main cause of this century's conflicts, accordingly to some experts, since it seems to be the main natural resource on the way to shortage. Maybe nobody think about the fact that in industrialized countries the main consume of water aren't showers, toilet, car washing or lawn, but industry. Building a single car needs much more fresh water then the amount of very clean average family will use in his whole life. At the same times fresh water access is getting more and more hard for population who suffers of desertification. And big corporates knows it very well, you could find dozens of investments funds in water companies. If you consider the rapidly growning economies of China and India that are the main cause of the pollution of the Himalaya's region and the consequently melting of glaciers of the same region that causes a shortage of fresh water, the global trend is pretty frightening, not for us maybe, but for our sons and nephews for sure.

BTW even Chuck's suggestion, "Drink beer", could be very hard to follow. No alcohol without fresh water.

Edited October 21, 2007 by porcy62

[BERIGAN]

Is there a rational scheme for water pricing in the Atlanta area?

Guy

A rational scheme? Not quite sure what you mean by that....Are you saying it's too cheap per gallon? I guess we could up the price some, but I feel that would be too little too late...Most people haven't been able to water their lawns for most of this year. Can't wash cars anymore, and probably won't be able to til next year at the very earliest. We can take shorter showers, but most people don't want to stop flushing toilets. For many a year all you can get is low flow shower heads, and toilets. Businesses on the other hand... at least up til a few weeks ago, I would see them running their sprinklers all the time to water a 2, 3 foot strip of grass

We are a city growing faster than any other large city in the nation, and no one has been planning for what can/will happen with this kind of growth. Plus, Gatorade is the largest water user in Atlanta. And as I have mentioned a few times, the Army Corp of Engineers seem hell bent on draining the lake, or at least pumping it to a point water pressure will be non existent. For all the screw ups mentioned in the last article, they screwed up last year as well and dumped billions and billions of gallons of water to help some sturgeon, not realizing that they had measured the water level incorrectly!

We are in a drought, a terrible one. We have been in and out of droughts for most of this century, and you just think that people at the state and Federal level would have a clue on how to handle this situation better.

Beri,

What I meant was... I know that in California and lots of other places, water is heavily subsidized to at least some users. (In Cal and Israel, farmers pay an tiny fraction of what others do.) I do not know if Atlanta residents pay the actual cost of the water they use, but yes, some sort of hike in the price of water would help alleviate some of the problems with the shortage and also potentially generate a market-driven solution to the water shortage.

Guy

Guy,

It would be interesting to see a comparison of water usage per household vs. big cities in California. Also the price per gallon here vs. elsewhere.

One just gets the feeling no matter what is done, it's going to be akin to Closing the barn door after the cows are gone. Conserving water will help, but it's kinda hard to convince people like my Dad to shut the water off while brushing your teeth, when you hear on the news that the Army Corp of Engineers is letting 1 billion gallons of water flow thru the dam a day, double what the lake takes in.

Funny, when we visited my 86 year old uncle in L.A. in August, he and other folks were saying how very, very dry it was this year, no real rain last winter, very dire situation....but, like clockwork on went the sprinkers every day, middle of the day, his house, other neighbors houses....water running into the streets. It was much greener there, than it was here. And we haven't been able to water after 10 AM for a few years here(Or after 8 pm)

[DTMX]

I flew back to ATL from Edgefest Sunday morning and the flight flew low over Lake Lanier (never been on a flight that did that before). It looks even scarier - and emptier - from the air. I think the hot Christmas gift this year will be gift baskets of bottled water. I haven't washed my car this year or watered my lawn in the past 15 years. Meanwhile in my part of town (Alpharetta), houses (and the occasional swimming pool) are still sprouting like mushrooms.

[Jazzmoose]

One just gets the feeling no matter what is done, it's going to be akin to Closing the barn door after the cows are gone. Conserving water will help, but it's kinda hard to convince people like my Dad to shut the water off while brushing your teeth, when you hear on the news that the Army Corp of Engineers is letting 1 billion gallons of water flow thru the dam a day, double what the lake takes in.

Hey, charge enough for water, and he'll turn the tap off. It's called letting the free market work. Maybe Atlanta should privatize the water company...

[Brownian Motion]

The New York Times

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October 22, 2007

Atlanta Shudders at Prospect of Empty Faucets

By SHAILA DEWAN and BRENDA GOODMAN

ATLANTA, Oct. 22 — For more than five months, the lake that provides drinking water to almost five million people here has been draining away in a withering drought. Sandy beaches have expanded into flats of orange mud. Tree stumps not seen in half a century have resurfaced. Scientists have warned of impending disaster.

And life has, for the most part, gone on just as before.

The response to the worst drought on record in the Southeast has unfolded in ultra-slow motion. All summer, more than a year after the drought began, fountains blithely sprayed, football fields were watered, prisoners got two showers a day and Coca-Cola’s bottling plants chugged along at full strength. In early October, on an 81-degree day, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million gallon mountain of snow.

In late September, with Lake Lanier forecast to dip into the dregs of “dead storage” in less than four months, the state imposed a ban on outdoor water use. Gov. Sonny Perdue declared October “Take a Shorter Shower Month.”

On Saturday, he declared a state of emergency for more than half the state and asked for federal assistance, though the state has not yet restricted indoor water use or cut back on major commercial and industrial users, a step that could cause a significant loss of jobs.

These last-minute measures belie a history of inaction in Georgia and across the South when it comes to managing and conserving water, even in the face of rapid growth. Between 1990 and 2000, Georgia’s water use increased by 30 percent. But the state has not yet come up with an estimate of how much water is available during periods of normal rainfall, much less a plan to handle the worst-case scenario of dry faucets.

“We have made it clear to the planners and executive management of this state for years that we may very well be on the verge of a system-wide emergency,” said Mark Crisp, a water expert in the Atlanta office of the engineering firm C. H. Guernsey.

The sense of urgency has been slow to take hold. Last year, a bill to require low-flow water devices be installed in older houses prior to resale died in the Legislature. Most golf courses are classified as “agricultural.” Water permits are still approved on a first-come, first-served basis.

And Georgia is not at the back of the pack; Alabama, where severe drought is more widespread, has not passed legislation calling for a management plan.

A realistic statewide plan, experts say, would tell developers that they cannot build if no water is available, and might have restricted some of the enormous growth in the Atlanta area over the last decade. Already, officials have little notion how to provide for a projected doubling of demand over the next 30 years. The ideas that have been floated, including piping water from Tennessee or desalinating ocean water, will require hundreds of billions of dollars and painful decisions the state has been loathe to undertake.

“It’s been develop first and ask questions later,” said Gil Rogers, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Instead, the state has engaged in interminable squabbles with its neighbors over dam releases and flow rates. The latest attempt at mediation with Alabama fell apart just last month. And Georgia officials insist that Atlanta would have plenty of water were it not for the Army Corps of Engineers, which they say has released more water from Lake Lanier than is necessary to protect three endangered species downstream. Last week, Governor Perdue filed for an injunction against the Corps.

“We are not here because we consumed our way into this drought, as some would suggest,” said his director of environmental protection, Carol Couch.

But that is exactly what the state’s critics are suggesting, including many people in Florida, the only state in the region to have adopted a water plan. An editorial Friday in The St. Petersburg Times in Florida, the downstream end of the basin that includes Lake Lanier, retorted that the blame lies not with the Corps but “a record drought, unrestrained population growth and poor water-conservation habits.”

Bruce A. Karas, vice president of sustainability for the Coca-Cola Company, said that no one from the city of Atlanta or its water planning district had approached company officials to ask them to conserve water, though he said Coke has been making efforts to reduce consumption on its own since 2004.

“We’re very concerned,” he said. “Water is our main ingredient. As a company, we look at areas where we expect water abundance and water scarcity, and we know water is scarce in the Southwest. It’s very surprising to us that the Southeast is in a water shortage.”

Mary Kay Woodworth, executive director of the Metro Atlanta Landscape and Turf Association, said almost 14,000 workers in landscaping and other businesses that depend on planting and watering had lost their jobs.

“This is a precious natural resource and it has not been managed well,” Ms. Woodworth said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re in this situation today. The infrastructure was not in place for the development.”

In 2001, the state did establish the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District for 16 counties and dozens of jurisdictions in the Atlanta area. The district has focused on implementing conservation pricing, under which the price of water increases as more is used, and incentives for replacing inefficient plumbing and monitoring for leaks, a major cause of water loss. Some environmentalists criticize the district, saying its requirements are weak and its progress unmeasured. Its projections, they say, are based on outdated estimate of water availability, provided by the state that does not take into account climate change.

But Pat Stevens, chief environmental planner for the Atlanta Regional Committee, which provides employees to the water district, said the plan is already under revision and the requirements will tighten over time. “You can’t just do this overnight, otherwise you will close businesses,” Ms. Stevens said. “We will out-conservation California, but you know, it takes time.” In January the Legislature will consider a proposal to expand the planning process statewide.

State officials have defended their response, saying the drought got very bad very quickly. And Georgia is not the only state in trouble. The drought has afflicted most of the Southeast, a region that is accustomed to abundant water and tends to view mandatory restrictions as government meddling. Lake Lanier is part of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system, which forms much of the border between Georgia and Alabama, and then spills into Florida, where it provides a habitat for two types of mussel and a sturgeon that are endangered.

The temptation to blame the Corps of Engineers is strong. Because of years of litigation, the Corps operates the dams under an interim policy driven largely by the need to protect the endangered species of fish and shellfish downstream. Critics say the requirements do not take into account severe dry spells and are not supported by science. Governor Perdue has complained that the water allowed out of the lake is twice what nature would provide under similar circumstances.

Two weekends ago, the Corps added to the pain in North Georgia by increasing the flow out of Lake Lanier even as it was shrinking. It is the only lake in the basin that still has water in what is considered the storage pool, usually the top 60 percent of the lake’s capacity. (Using the remaining water, called “dead storage,” could require different intake mechanisms and more treatment.)

In response to Governor Perdue’s complaints, the Corps has agreed to consult the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, which protects endangered species, about modifying flow requirements in the Apalachicola.

With a public anxious over the possibility of running out of water, the Corps has not been the only entity to shoulder blame. On Oct. 1, Stone Mountain Park began to make snow for a winter mountain, hoping to attract children who had never seen the real thing.

The mountain had been planned during the very wet summer of 2005, and the state and county were duly informed, said Christine Parker, a spokeswoman for the park. The state announced the Level 4 drought response on a Friday and, after park officials reviewed the list of exceptions for businesses, snow-blowing began the following Monday, before much of the public had fully grasped the severity of the situation. After the project was ridiculed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, it shut down. Only then did the park hear from state environmental authorities.

Stone Mountain had never intended to take a cavalier attitude toward the drought, Ms. Parker said, but had not been given any guidance. “A lot of businesses are having to go out and ask the right questions,” she said, “so they can do the right thing.”

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[BERIGAN]

It just gets stranger, and stranger. They are telling folks at sporting events to NOT flush toilets and are hiring attendants to just flush periodically. How would you like that job????

And the dumbest dumb fucks (AKA the Army Corp of Engineers) after the Gov dropped his suit against them, and they agreed to drop water drainage by a lousy 16%, have once again increased waterflow to save those mussels....guess it's time to start hoarding water.

As Lanier dries, Chattahoochee swells

By Stacy Shelton

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 11/09/07

One effect of Lake Lanier's fast decline: The Chattahoochee River it feeds is swelling with water.

The federal agency that operates Lanier is releasing more water in the river to make up for dry conditions downstream. Water stored in two other federal reservoirs on the Chattahoochee is mostly depleted, leaving Lanier to do the job of providing most of the water needed for protected mussels downstream in Florida.

On Thursday, Lanier hit its lowest level since January 1982.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week began sending two big releases downstream every day, in the morning and late afternoon, which also generates electricity. The corps plans to keep it up at least through next Thursday, when federal biologists are scheduled to report back on whether the mussels can survive with less water. If they say OK, the corps plans to reduce the water flowing into Florida by 16 percent.

Until then, the corps says it's obligated to maintain a flow of at least 3.2 billion gallons of water every day into Florida. On Wednesday, Lanier contributed more than two-thirds of that —- 2.4 billion gallons coursed down the Chattahoochee.

The lake has lost a full 20 percent of its water surface. Most docks are dry. Out of 104 ramps, just eight have enough water at the end to stick a boat in.

On Thursday, Memphis Vaughan, the corps' chief regional water manager, said this year's rainfall in the metro Atlanta region has been the lowest ever recorded. Rain is expected Tuesday.

[Brownian Motion]

Stop kvetching about the mussels. Mussels make a tasty chowder.