Atlanta Water Shortage

We mentioned a few weeks ago that DeKalb County was planning on requiring all homes build before 1993 to be retrofitted with low-flow toilets and shower heads before they could be resold.  According to the Freshloaf Blog (whose source was a press release by the Atlanta Board of Realtors), “the lobbying group inundated commissioners with phone calls opposing the DeKalb ordinance.” The realtors fear that this ordinance would negatively impact the real estate market in the county.

If passed, this ordinance could save the county about 3.5 million gallons of water per day.  The cost to retrofit most homes would typically be less than $450 — money which would be recouped within about three years from lower water bills.

The commissioners will vote on the ordinance on Wednesday, December 5th.  Here is a PDF with the “Retrofit on Resale” legislation that has been proposed.

AWS reader Lawrence Freil (known as “lf61” in our forums) has just built a slick JavaScript-based tool that helps estimate the future water levels of Lake Lanier.

Here’s how it works, in his words:

In previous discussions there have been mentions of the change in the rate at which Lake Lanier will drop due to the shape of the lake itself. As the water level gets lower the rate should increase. I set out to estimate this change in rate and from that project the number of days till empty.

I decided to make this a dynamic tool that could be used to see “what if” situations with varying water loss and the result is a dynamic html/javascript www page that allows you to enter the current water level, a daily water level fall rate and using the data derived from the fill charts will project the number of days remaining.

The tool itself contains a more detailed explanation of how the change in rate data was derived and if you see any issues with it, just let me know.

Lake Lanier Water Level Projection tool

(via Watercrunch)  The National Academy of Sciences has just published a report titled “Water Implications of Biofuel Production in the United States“.  The summary from the Watercrunch article:

The report basically states that if the projected increases in the use of corn for ethanol production occur, the harm to water quality could be considerable, and water supply problems at the regional and local levels could also escalate.

The Oil Drum has a much more in-depth look at the report, with many more charts and some great discussions.  Their summary suggests that Ethanol might not be the right solution to the oil problem.  From their site:

We CAN increase our internal production of transportation liquids. In addition to ethanol and biodiesel, we can use coal-to-liquids via Fischer Tropsch; we can drill the Arctic or Alaska Wildlife Refuge; we can expand land to dedicated energy crops, etc. A joint study of the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Agriculture concludes that the United States could produce 60 billion gallons of ethanol by 2030 through a combination of grain and cellulosic feedstocks, enough to replace 30% of projected U.S. gasoline demand. Scientists and policymakers should be asking them ‘at what cost’? When they reply XX billions, the comeback should be ‘we didn’t mean in $ terms-what are the costs in other scarce inputs needed by society?’. In robbing Peter to pay Paul, we have to realize that Paul is pretty insatiable. Who will we rob after Peter?

We have oil problems, so we’ll use more water to fix them.  Then the water problems become more severe.  What do we do next to try to fix those?  It could be an ugly cycle.

(note: the following is a guest post by AWS reader S. Corey Thomas)

A recent edition of Fresh Air on NPR featured an interview with Peter Gleick, a MacArthur Fellow and co-founder of the non-partisan environmental think-tank, The Pacific Institute . Since 1998, Gleick has assessed the state of global water resources in a biennial report, The World’s Water. The fifth volume in this acclaimed series is now available, with a focus on the implications between water and terrorism and the increasing risks of flood and drought due to climate change and excessive development.

In this interview, Peter Gleick discusses the water crisis that looms over many areas of the United States, including Atlanta and the drought-stricken southeast. The difficulties of desalination are explored, as well as the environmental costs of bottled water versus tap water. Gleick notes that, in many places in the US, we have reached the limits of growth against the constraints of freshwater supplies. Atlanta would do well to pay attention to his message.

Below are some excerpts from the interview:

“The opportunity to build new dams and new reservoirs is pretty much gone. We’ve built on the good dam sites, and unfortunately some of the bad dam sites as well. We’re going to have to rethink the way we use the existing resources we have. There may be places to build new infrastructure, but I actually think the 21st century is going to be — in the United States especially — a century of water management, and smart use, and rethinking allocations of water from one user to another, and figuring out how to use the infrastructure we’ve built better.”

“In the past, the attitude has been ‘Build it, and we’ll figure out a way to get the water there.’ And that worked, to some degree, in the 20th century, but it’s not gonna work in the 21st century. There isn’t any more water. We’re at the limits of our resources here. And we’re not gonna go to Canada or Alaska, we’re not gonna desalinate seawater infinitely and move it to Las Vegas — it’s too far and too expensive. And so, the idea that we can grow without thinking about the resources that are available for that growth is an old idea, and it’s not going to work any longer.”

S. Corey Thomas

As was the case during the last bit of rain we got, Lake Lanier dropped even further yesterday in spite of the rain. In fact, since this blog started (October 16), the lake has dropped every single day.

However, there is a bit of somewhat good news. The lake only dropped 0.03 feet yesterday, which was the lowest single-day drop in over a month. In addition, we should see less water released from the dam over the next few days, as the Chattahoochee will be getting extra water from the rivers and streams that feed into it because of the rain (explained a bit further in this post). In fact, the lake is actually up by about 0.04 feet for the day, though that gain will probably be erased during the evening water release at the dam.

The other good thing that could come out of the rain is that the ground is now holding more water. The problem we’ve been having is that each time it rains, the ground just soaks it up because it had been so long since the previous rain. If we can get some more rain the next few days, it would probably be more beneficial because the ground won’t be quite as dry. However, the rain that was forecast for this weekend seems to have evaporated and nothing is expected until late next week. At the point, the ground will be getting pretty thirsty again.

Just over a month ago, we posted about how using gray water might be a great way to help conserve water.  Now a UGA scientist has come out and said that gray water usage probably isn’t a good idea.

Todd Rasmussen, a hydrology professor at UGA, says that gray water is typically pretty safe, but has the potential to be dangerous as it could still contain traces of fecal matter, blood or other contaminants.  Even water that comes from a clean running sink (waiting for it to warm up before you shave, for example) is only good for about 24 hours until the chlorine evaporates or breaks down.

Maybe the best solution would be a gray water system that re-chlorinates the water before it’s pumped back into your toilets.  It’s not mentioned in the article, but it would seem to make sense.  Thoughts?

Las Vegas is in the midst of a seven year drought that has left Lake Mead (the lake created by Hoover Dam) nearly 100 feet low.

This article in the AJC explains some of things things they’ve done to fight the drought, which essentially offers suggest that Atlanta should follow.   They’ve saved about 18 billion gallons a year from 2002-2006, even though they had 330,000 more residents move into the area.

It’s a good read.  Thanks to Ryan for the link.

With the wealth of information about the drought that is available, we thought a wiki might be a good way to help organize it.

You are encouraged to participate and help build a strong collection of facts and information about the drought. There are about 17 pages so far, including things such as the scheduled daily releases from Buford Dam, definitions for things like cfs and AMSL and a variety of other things.

Some people are confused about the difference between our forums and our wiki. In short, the wiki is for purely factual information, while the forums are designed to share ideas and opinions. For example:

• “A prayer vigil was held on Tuesday, November 13 to pray for rain…” — This could go in a wiki entry.
• “The government doesn’t need to get involved with praying for rain…” — This would in the forums.

I hope that this becomes a useful resource for many of you.

As with every bit of rain we’ve seen over the last few months, the rain we got on Wednesday night and Thursday morning had no direct benefit for Lanier.

Lake Lanier (measured in Buford) got a total of 0.43 inches of rain.  However, during Wednesday and Thursday the lake dropped by another 3.24 inches.

We’ve explained before that rain on one day can be of some benefit for a few days down the road.  However, I don’t expect that .43 inches will help much at all.

Accuweather’s forecast still shows some rain possibly coming our way Saturday night, Sunday and Sunday night, with an expected total of around 0.79 inches, with another storm maybe arriving around the first of December.

The AJC has just put a countdown on their drought page that shows exactly how much time is left for Lake Lanier.  As of right now, there are about 90 days and 1 hour left.  The problem with this countdown, as with most of them, is that they don’t explain where that number comes from — wasn’t it just “79 days left” about a week ago?

The good news is that some of the rain forecast for our area seems very likely to happen.  The specifics from Accuweather:

• Tonight - 0.65 inches
• Thanksgiving - 0.20 inches
• Saturday night - 0.99 inches
• Sunday night - 0.50 inches
• Monday night - 0.36 inches
• Tuesday - 0.25 inches
• Tuesday night - 0.50 inches

Now, we all know how often weather forecasts are wrong, but that is certainly encouraging.  That’s nearly 3.5 inches of rain forecast over the next week — far more than the 2.26 inches we’ve seen since October 1st.  We’ll be sure to update the official rainfall amounts on our Lanier Rainfall page, as well as show exactly what that rain has done for the lake level.

Given how dry the ground is, even 3.5 inches of rain won’t do much.  However, it’s important to realize that rain today might help the lake for a few days down the line, as the Corps can probably reduce the flow because of extra water from the smaller rivers that feed into the Chattahoochee (we explained that a bit in this post).

Even if it doesn’t do much to help, every little bit is good.