Atlanta Water Shortage

Straight from the USGS Georgia website here are some great tips to helping improve urban stormwater runoff:

• Keep litter, pet wastes, leaves, and debris out of street gutters and storm drains–these outlets drain directly to lake, streams, rivers, and wetlands.
• Apply lawn and garden chemicals sparingly and according to directions.
• Dispose of used oil, antifreeze, paints, and other household chemicals properly, not in storm sewers or drains. If your community does not already have a program for collecting household hazardous wastes, ask your local government to establish one.
• Clean up spilled brake fluid, oil, grease, and antifreeze. Do not hose them into the street where they can eventually reach local streams and lakes.
• Control soil erosion on your property by planting ground cover and stabilizing erosion-prone areas.
• Encourage local government officials to develop construction erosion/sediment control ordinances in your community.
• Have your septic system inspected and pumped, at a minimum, every 3-5 years so that it operates properly.
• Purchase household detergents and cleaners that are low in phosphorous to reduce the amount of nutrients discharged into our lakes, streams and coastal waters.

What are you doing to help water quality? Are there other things you can think of that aren’t included in this list? Personally I own a paint company and we’re very diligent about disposing and cleaning our latex and oil paints – we don’t just clean them out over storwater runoff drains, we take care of it in our shop. It’s a small thing, but it certainly helps.

The city of Atlanta wants to tighten their water restrictions, but now has to jump through some hoops.

On May 14, Gov. Perdue signed House Bill 1281, which made it illegal for any local government to override the state’s water restrictions without permission.  The Environmental Protection Division is reviewing the request, along with a request to reduce restrictions in Coweta County.

To clear things up, here are the current restrictions for most of north Georgia:

• No sprinklers. Use a hand-held garden hose with an automatic shut-off only. Only one hose at a time.
• Water three days a week: Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays for houses with odd-numbered addresses and Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays for houses with even-numbered addresses.
• Water between midnight and 10 a.m.
• Water for 25 minutes only.
• More liberal rules for new landscaping allow sprinklers for ten weeks after planting new grass, shrubs, trees and flowers, on the three-day schedule and limited hours.
  • To use the more lenient rules, homeowners must be certified through an on-line course given by the Georgia Urban Agriculture Council at www.urbanagcouncil.com. Certification is also available from each county’s extension agent.

The Atlanta City Council’s Utilities Committee has a plan in place to raise water rates by 27.5% this year and roughly 12.5% for each of the next three years.  Understandably, Atlanta residents aren’t pleased.

The increased revenue would go toward a $4 billion project to improve the city’s water and sewer system.  Atlanta has been showcased as a city in dire need of repair in those areas, so the plan has some merit.  In addition, the higher rates would likely help to curb usage and help keep more water in the system.

Water usage by Atlanta residents is a rather small piece of the problem, but anything to help people conserve would be a good thing.  On the other hand, the rate of those increases seems a bit insane, doesn’t it?  The result would be more than an 80% increase in rates in just four years.  You’d think there would be a better way.

According to an article on 11Alive, Atlanta is still losing about 17 million gallons of water every day due to leaks.  In fact, Popular Mechanics considers the Atlanta water system to be one of the “10 Pieces of U.S. Infrastructure We Must Fix Now“.  That’s never good news, but it’s even worse when you consider the drought.

The city says that they’re repairing about 800 leaks per month, and the amount of water being wasted drops by about 1% per year.  As Janet Ward, of Atlanta Watershed Management says:

“The problem with the system that as big and as old as Atlanta’s is, you’re never going to repair the last leak.  There is always going to be another leak.”

These leaks are a bigger waste of water than the water you flush down your toilet.  As we’ve said before, water going down the drain isn’t necessarily “wasted”.  However, water that ends up in your grass (or leaking out of pipes underground) won’t be recaptured by the watershed anytime soon, if ever.

Does anyone know if the city has plans to accelerate the improvement of our water infrastructure?

The AJC has an article in today’s paper that discusses how much people have cut back to help conserve water in the metro area.  It’s a pretty good article, looking at both conversation and current restrictions. The online version doesn’t include it, but there is a chart in the paper (page C8) which I’ve included a photo of.  Does it look familiar?

I have two problems with their chart:

• It doesn’t include April data.  It was easy enough to update this chart with data from April 1st, but for some reason they didn’t do that.  March saw a pretty good rise in the lake level, and I’m guessing they felt that would hurt their story, so they left it out.
• They didn’t give us credit.  We try to always give credit to our sources, but they didn’t feel the need to do that.  Coincidence, you say?  I don’t think so.  Stacy Shelton, the author of the article, e-mailed me a few days ago and said “We loved your Lanier chart so much we stole the idea“.  I assumed “stole” was being used playfully, but I was obviously wrong.

The data obviously isn’t mine (it comes from the USACE), and the AJC recreated the graph from scratch (adding an extra year to it), but it’s still pretty weak to blatantly copy an idea like that without a bit of credit.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been upset with the AJC.  One of my first posts on this blog called into question some numbers that they apparently made up.  Despite repeated e-mails to the author of that article and some other folks at the AJC, I never heard a word from them.  I guess they were too embarrassed to admit their mistake.

A story at 11Alive tells us that Gwinnett County will allow landscapers, construction companies and others to take reclaimed wastewater from the F. Wayne Hill Water Resources Center and use it for irrigation, street washing, sewer cleaning, etc.

Once again, it seems that some people don’t understand how things work. From the article:

Every day, 18 million gallons of waste water is treated at Gwinnett’s F. Wayne Hill Water Resources Center until it is clean enough to place in the Chattahoochee River. Until now, the river is exactly where the water has gone, where it has floated gently away from Bradley [local landscaper] and other businesses that need it for watering lawns or street washing.

They make it sound like putting water back into the river is a bad thing, while the opposite is actually true. The more you put into the river, the less they need to release from Lake Lanier to keep the flow rate high enough in Florida. If you put less back into the river, more water will need to be released from Lanier to compensate.

That being said, I don’t think this will make a huge difference. The water can only be taken away by certified tank truck drivers, not via pipes, which will greatly reduce how much is lost. However, it sounds like landscapers are excited to waste their share of water. Bradley Griffin of Russell Landscape Group said:

“The sky’s the limit with just how much our company can use. Multiply that by all of the other landscape companies and construction companies, this is a big deal.”

Yea!  Waste as much as you want!

However, water is already pumped from there to two golf courses, a county park, a city park and the Mall of Georgia. According to the AJC, those facilities used 209 million gallons of water last year. That makes a difference.

I’m guessing that those facilities are able to freely use the water for irrigation, since the water was just going to be “wasted” by going down the river. Anyone know what kind of restrictions those businesses are under for using that water?

I appreciate what DeKalb County is trying to do here, but it seems pretty stupid once you dig into it. Starting in a few months, if you buy an older house in DeKalb County and it doesn’t have low-flow toilets, the county won’t hook up water to your house.

The move was praised by most people. From the article:

“This is really a pretty big deal,” said Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. She said metro Atlanta will face increasing pressure to conserve water as the population grows.

Here’s the catch – DeKalb County gets their water from the Chattahoochee River and returns the wastewater there. The “wasted” water that is flushed down the old toilets goes back into the river and finds its way to Jim Woodruff Dam in Florida. This is where they measure the flow of water coming from Atlanta to determine how much more to release from Lanier. As long as the water makes it back into the river, it’s not depleting the level of the lake. Here is a post from a few weeks ago where we went into more detail about that.

Granted, not 100% of the water makes it back, so this move will save a little bit of water. Some is lost to leaks, some evaporates, etc.  However, given the horrible real estate market we’re in, anything that makes things hard on people trying to sell their house seems like a bad idea. From the article:

Barbara Campbell, president of the DeKalb Association of Realtors, wondered how the county would enforce its mandate on sellers to disclose their old toilets. Selling a house is hard enough, especially in this economy, she said. “When you’re selling your home, I don’t think you’re going to be announcing that.”

I agree.

Effective yesterday, Cobb County has eased their water restrictions and allowed backyard burning until May 1.  In addition, some watering will be allowed.

The details:

• Residents can hand-water landscaping by using a hose with a shutoff valve for 25 minutes on an odd-even schedule based on street address. Watering times are 4- 9 a.m. Even and unnumbered addresses may water Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. No watering is permitted on Friday, regardless of your address.
• Rates for irrigation-only water accounts rise to the most expensive tier: $5.40 per thousand gallons, from $3.52 per thousand gallons.
• Fines go into effect for wasting water, such as by having a broken irrigation system, allowing excessive water to run off property or leaving a hose unattended without a shutoff nozzle. Fine for the second offense is $100; fines for any offense after that are $500.
• Backyard burning, which requires keeping a water hose nearby to control the fire, will be permitted until the state’s regular summer ban returns May 1.

Starting April1 , pools can be filled and topped off as needed.  Also, car washes may continue to operate if they use a water recycling system and pressure washing may be performed by a licensed professional prior to a “procedure” (painting, staining, etc) or for health and safety reasons, though pressure washing is still not allowed for aesthetics.

I thought this was kind of funny:

The (Chattanooga) mayor has officially proclaimed Feb. 27, 2008, as “Give our Georgia Friends a Drink Day.” The proclamation comes as a result of the Georgia Legislature passing a joint resolution that seeks to pursue reestablishing the boundary between Georgia and Tennessee.

The truck load of bottled water along with the proclamation will be delivered to the Georgia Legislature Wednesday morning.

“Please know that we are willing to help our neighbors to the south with this complimentary truck load of water,” said Mayor Littlefield. “And along with this water, we want to send Georgia legislators a message that focusing on conservation efforts would be much more productive than an ill-conceived land and water grab.”

Ouch.  Gotta give them points for creativity, though!

Contrary to popular wisdom (even mentioned on our site a while back), collecting excess shower water in a bucket to use on your flowers will probably make the water shortage worse in the long run, not better.

Before I get into the reasons, there are a few points that must be made:

• If you have a septic system, this doesn’t apply.  This only counts if you are connected to the sewer system.
• If you feel the need to water your plants at the expense of the overall water storage, this doesn’t apply.

For the rest of us that use the city sewer systems and are willing to let some plants die to help the greater good, take the bucket out of your shower — the more water you can put into your drain, the better.

Obviously, the best thing you can do is to use less water.  However, of the water that you use you want to send as much as possible back down the drain.  That water gets treated and released back into the Chattahoochee River (or other water system, depending where you live).

“So what?”, you say — that water is gone, it’s heading south, and doesn’t help us.  Ahh, but it does.  The bulk of the water being released from Lake Lanier is not for Atlanta to use, but to meet a minimum flow requirement down at Jim Woodruff Dam in Florida (currently 4,750 CFS, I believe).  The water that goes down your drain eventually makes it to Woodruff Dam.  The more water they get down there, the less we need to release from Lake Lanier.  Voilà!

Here are a few more examples of how this could apply to you:

• We have a dehumidifier in our basement that collects a good bit of water during the summer.  We had been using it to water some flowers in our yard.  However, our best bet is probably to empty the basin into a drain in our house.  The more water we put in there, the more they can keep in Lanier.  We like our flowers, but I’d rather use that water to keep a few gallons more in the lake.
• A user e-mailed me to ask if anything can be done with the hundreds of gallons of water that have collected on pool covers.  I told him to put it into the sewer.  That water will reach Woodruff Dam, and Lanier will be able to keep a bit in reserve as a result.

Again, your best move is to use less water.  It wouldn’t make sense to pull extra water out of the tap only to have it go down the drain — it’d be a waste of time and money, and some of the water will still be lost (evaporation, leaks, etc).  However, the more water you can put back into the drain (as opposed to putting on flowers, grass, etc), the better off we’ll be.

Agree?  Disagree?  Post in the comments.