Atlanta Water Shortage

According to an article on 11Alive, we might be looking at tighter water restrictions next month.  Rain has been quite sparce this month, and Lake Lanier has dropped nearly a foot.

The state EPD director, Carol Couch, will make a decision next month.

What do you think she should do?  Why?

According to an article in the AJC, the sun is responsible for about 2/10″ drop in lanier every day.  It’s been losing about an inch/day lately (0.84 the last few days), a trend which seems likely to continue for a while.  Yesterday, that 2/10″ amounted to over 193 million gallons.

The weather is cooling off a bit, which should help, but no major rain is anywhere in the forecast.

The various rivers and streams that flow into Lake Lanier are at (or near) their all-time lows, which isn’t a good sign for the lake.

According to 11Alive, the Chattahoochee River north of the lake is at 28% of its normal flow.  Other than the 28% figure, the article didn’t give any other numbers, just quotes from local residents talking about how low it looks.

So far this year, the lake has done pretty well.  It even surprised some folks (like myself) when it rose a few inchdes last month.  This month has been a slow but steady drop, down about 4 inches so far.  Last June, the lake dropped by about 21 inches, so at least we’re still dropping at a slower rate.  Of course, we’re already about 10 feet lower than this time last year…

If the inflow continues to dwindle, this could create some big problems, even with the revised operating plan in place.

The Lawrenceville Weather Blog has a nice look at the current state of the drought.  From their site:

And, indeed the latest drought monitor for Georgia shows an area of extreme drought in the northeast corner of the state enlarging to the west, including portions of Gwinnett county, and virtually all of the Lake Lanier drainage basin. As of Tuesday, 8.9% of Georgia was in extreme drought, compared to 2.3% last week. 61% of the state is classified as being in a moderate drought. However, as the comparison below shows, we’re still better off than we were at this time last year. On June 12, 2007, 47% of Georgia was in extreme drought and 96.1% was in at least a moderate drought.

Hopefully we’ll get some lucky downpours over the next few weeks to help prop us up, then a slow moving tropical storm later this summer.  We can dream, can’t we?

(so sad, having to dream about tropical storms…)

(Note: This is a guest post by Rich S.)

On June 2nd, the U.S. fish and wildlife service gave their blessing to the Corps of Engineers Revised Interim Operating Plan (PDF).

So for the foreseeable future, this plan defines how decisions will be made concerning water retention in the ACF system including Lake Lanier.  This plan is a modification of the operating plan the corps has been using for the last several years.  The modifications are intended to favor retention or storage in the reservoirs of the ACF above the old plan which clearly released too much water during the recent drought.

I was surprised to see that the plan doesn’t really address Lanier or any of the other lakes individually, but mainly addresses the release from Jim Woodruff dam because of course everything that isn’t released from that Dam is held in the five reservoirs of the ACF.

Decisions about how much water is to be released vs. stored are based on three factors: Composite action zone, season, and inflow.

The composite action zone is similar to the one you are likely familiar with from this lake Lanier forecast chart - http://water.sam.usace.army.mil/lanfc.htm

The composite chart adds the storage from all five reservoirs and treats it as a sum of the entire system.  The action zones are similar with zone one being relatively good and zone four being very low water levels.  They also added a fifth zone that they call the “drought zone”.

Release levels vary by three seasons: spawning season (March-May); non-spawning season (June-November); and winter (December-February).  Regardless of the season, when the composite level reaches zone four, releases from Woodruff dam are reduced to 5000 cf/s.  Any inflow above that level can be retained as storage.  Likewise, when the composite level reaches the drought zone, releases are reduced to 4500 cf/s.

During the winter period, releases are reduced to 5000 cf/s regardless of the composite zone (except 4500 cf/s in the drought zone).  All additional inflow is stored.

Aside from the above situations, releases from Woodruff dam are based on season, zone, and inflow with some portion of any inflow above 8000 cf/s  retained for storage.

Compared to the old plan, this one lets us release a little less water when times are bad, and store a little more of the excess when times are good.  It’s not going to solve all of our problems, but it may actually be sustainable over time, which the old plan clearly proved not to be.

Rich

11Alive has a brief article explaining some changes to Rome’s water restrictions.  Three days per week, between midnight and 10am, residents can:

• Water their lawns and gardens
• Wash their cars
• Put water in their swimming pools

The state EPD (Environmental Protection Division) approved the changes.

Despite smelling pretty bad for the last week, the water coming out of your faucet is safe to drink.

According this AJC article, the water is a result of “reservoir turnover”.  This is causing sediment and algae to mix with the water, creating the stink.  It apparently happens from time to time, last occuring “three or four years ago”.

In any case, the water is perfectly safe to drink even though the smell might last a bit longer.

Well, sort of.  An interesting side effect of potentially moving the Georgia-Tennessee line is that a few towns in southern Tennessee would have to stop selling alcohol.  Copperhill, TN has some bars, but would suddenly find themselves located in Fannin County, GA if the state line were moved.  Fannin County is dry and doesn’t permit alcohol sales.

The state line is even a bit of a tourist attraction.  Just across the state line from Copperhill is McCaysville, GA.  The town has bright blue dashes all over the place to show the jagged state line — even running through buildings, streets and bars.

All of that being said, moving the state line is very unlikely.  As the article points out:

Any border change would likely require an act of Congress or a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, so it’s highly unlikely the state lines would actually move.

This also goes to show just how much thought would need to go into such a major decision — there are a lot of small things that would be affected as well.

It’s time again for our Lanier status update, and just like last month I’m quite pleased with the results.  I had predicted that the lake would “drop a few feet” by June, but it actually rose by a few inches.

There are a few conclusions to be made from this:

• It’s wonderful that the lake held steady for the month.  In the past two years, May saw an average drop of about 1.5 feet.
• We’re still nearly 10 feet lower than this time last year.  With as bad as things got last year, it’s not good to be 10 feet below there.
• We’re closing the gap.  A month ago we were about 11 feet lower than last year and we’ve inched a bit closer.

I’ll once again predict a drop of a couple feet for the coming month, but I say it with much less confidence.

Any predictions from you?