But I agree, Lanier’s loss is mostly due to water levels.
I have been to Lazy Days Marina on lake Lanier in the past. The Beachem’s, the original owner’s of Lazy Days have got to be the smartest Marina owners on the lake . They sold that Marina for TOP dollar just weeks before the worst drought in history took hold. The new owners certainly didn’t do their Due Dilligence very well, or they would have seen it coming. People were talking about the coming problems of a severe drought even before it started. The new owners could’t get half what they paid for it now.

My point is that if your budget is so tight that an extra $20/car/week (20 gallons of gas, one tank a week) eats up all your entertainment money, then you probably don’t own a boat. Or certainly not a gasoline sucking monster of a boat.

We’ll see less boating on the whole because of gas prices. But I think much of Lanier’s loss is due to it’s present state.

Further reseveroirs downstream are releasing the water needed for Mussels. Been that way through most of June and all of July.

Obviously it will resurface as an issue - Lanier IS the source of water for all the lower reseveroirs if rain doesn’t provide. But right now it’s not.

Gasoline prices may be a player in the business downturn, but it is not half the issue. Remember, it’s not that people can’t pay “four dollars a gallon” it’s “will they pay $1 more a gallon”. If you already own a boat, and can already afford to burn through 40 gallons of $3 gas, is an extra $40 for that day’s fun really going to stop you?

What would you think if the Department of the Interior put the kibash on mining or ranching operations that could bring millions to our economy because it endangered the habitat of the Gila monster?

Are you kidding? We lose jobs and low-cost goods and millions to save some lizards?

Well, it turns out the saliva of the Gila monster has properties that can help treat diabetes better than what we have now.

Look at how many people suffer from diabetes now.

And we’d want to lose this medicine so we do some mining or ranching? I think we’d feel pretty stupid.

I can’t imagine these mussels that are being protected are a few dozen gypsies who set up camp off the reservation and there are millions of the same elsewhere.

Not every environmentalist is a nutjob who does things without reason.

How much of the medicine we (and our family members use) come from plants and animals? Maybe all of them?

The point is this. Gas prices are killing the businesses and industries that were designed to thrive at $1.30/gl prices. Marina’s up and down the Mississippi, on Lake Superior, and even in the super-wealthy places like Martha’s Vineyard and Fairfield County, CT, are seeing drastic reductions in boat sales and services (gasoline, etc.) Why? Because operating a 300+ hp boat that consumes 15-20 gls/hr to operate has become financially painful. One fellow, who’s Hatteras 54C (beautiful boat!) is equipped with twin 800 hp engines, which gulp 130 gls/hr at 75% cruise to move approximately 26 miles. You can do the math. Even a well-to-do fellow starts to feel a pinch.

Consider your average run-about ski-boat on Lanier burning 10 gls/hr and you start to understand that a weekend of water-skiing will seriously impact the middle-class pocket-book. And this is at current prices. Every IEA and other energy agency indication is that fossil-energy prices have nowhere to go but up. Under such circumstances, who would rationally speculate in a discretionary purchase to which operation costs look increasingly unsupportable?

Bottom line: energy issues are as much or more responsible for the change in fortunes among Lake Lanier’s businesses as is the water level.

Perhaps it’s not the worst idea to address climate and energy issues as a comprehensive whole?

Why is it that Atlanta is the one that needs to change it’s usage but downstream users seem to have a right to more water than nature provides?

As addressing the underlying climate issues will be slow, I’d say Atlanta needs to adapt to the reduced precipitation that seems to be the pattern.

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JUMP DOWN TURN AROUND PICK A BALE OF COTTON

Throwing things out of the lifeboat in an effort to keep it from sinking isn’t going to repair the leak that is causing the lifeboat to flood and sink.

As addressing the underlying climate issues will be slow, I’d say Atlanta needs to adapt to the reduced precipitation that seems to be the pattern.

How much would you personally sacrifice to save that mussel species? Would you give up your life savings? I doubt it, but you do understand that there are people up here in exactly that position. How can you ask them to give up so much when you wouldn’t do it yourself?