Atlanta Water Shortage

There was an announcement today that the army corps of Engineers is going to increase the water flows out of Lake Lanier.

Representatives from Georgia, Florida and Alabama regularly get to together on a conference call with the Corps of Engineers to discuss water issues. Thursday’s call produced bad news for Georgia and Lake Lanier.

The Corps of Engineers denied metro Atlanta’s request to minimizewater releases from Lake Lanier for another month. It was good news for Florida and Alabama who opposed the corps’ decision last year to reduce releases from November through April 30.

With the summer months rapidly coming up and the lake still below “normal” levels, it seems a bit premature to start draining the lake just because the past 6 months have had abnormally high water levels.

Read more commentary here.

Just 3 months ago at the end of November, Lake Lanier was very close to it’s record low of 1,050.81 feet. It got all the way down to 1,051.35 feet just 1/2 a foot away from the record.

Many students from surrounding colleges have been tracking the local lake’s levels to gauge how much of an impact the water shortage has had – even students at a local hospitality school were paying attention, since this sort of scare can affect tourism as well.

Since November there has been a solid amount of precipitation (even snow) that have helped fill the lake up to 1,057.45 feet as of March 1st, 2009. That is an increase of 6 feet in a short amount of time and a good start to 2009 for Lake Lanier.

60 Day Graph

Not much to report, just thought I drop in a quick picture of Lake Lanier’s water level over the last 60 days.

Straight from an AJC article, it talks about the big picture for Lake Lanier. Weeds and shrubs have invaded the shore and boat ramps end way before they reach the water and the impact reaches out beyond just the lake.

The relentless drought that first crept into metro Atlanta more than two and a half years ago has many victims, from landscapers to fishing guides. None show more visible scars than Lanier.

Last year, the lake’s red clay-ringed shoreline made national news, along with dire warnings that the South’s capital city could run out of water. Lanier is out of the spotlight this year, but not much better off.

This last comment seems to echo many of the posters here, Lake Lanier seems very much out of the spotlight this year and receives very little attention.

The locally heavy rains in Atlanta have raised Lake Lanier’s water level from 1050 feet and 11.88 inches on Dec. 9th to 1051 feet and 6.24 inches today at 5:15 EST – a gain of almost 6.5 inches!

The heavy rainfall in the area has caused many of the local rivers to rise and the runoff has helped build Lake Lanier’s level. There is still a flood watch in effect for North and South Fulton as of 11:08am EST, though it looks like the heaviest rains are in the past.

As of today, November 25th at 2am EST, Lake Lanier is down to 1051.20 feet 4.68 inches from the record. I saw some guesses for Dec. 1st and Dec. 4th for the record low, it should be right around then barring any major rainfall.

On a personal note, I’ve taken over the blog and the posting from Mickey. His great work and excellent contribution to content left me a high bar to live up to. If anyone has any suggestions for the blog or is dying to write a guest post, send me an email at: Chad@AtlantaWaterShortage.com. Thanks in advance for all the regular contributors – I’ve read through many of the comments and there is some great feeback.

I’m not from Atlanta, but I definitely feel an attachment to the area as my wife grew up in Marietta – so I have some local ties. Looking forward to making many more posts!

The state of Georgia had been hoping to overturn a ruling that invalidated a 2003 agreement that let Georgia take extra water from Lake Lanier, but an overruling on that court decision now appears to be unlikely.

Specifically, as per 11Alive:

The Justice Department has recommended that the high court not take up the case, maintaining in a brief filed last week that Georgia’s arguments are flawed and that the issue is not significant enough to merit Supreme Court attention.

While I’m not sure which way it should go, I’m surprised they call it “not significant enough”.  With the lake quickly approaching new record low levels, it certainly seems like it’d be an important ruling.

The record low is getting real close, but I’m still not hearing much about it on the news.  The level today is at 1051.35, only 0.54 feet from the record low of 1050.81.  We’re dropping about 0.05 feet/day, which means it could start setting new records the first week of December.

Some of the guesses from our thread a few weeks ago still look to be pretty close.  Anyone care to revise their guess?

The record low for Lake Lanier is 1050.81, set on December 23 of last year.  On this day last year, the lake was at 1055.19 and falling fast.  Today we’re nearly three feet lower (1052.26), though it’s not falling as quickly.

Lately, on average, the lake is falling around 0.06 ft/day.  At that rate we’re about 25 days away from reaching the new record low.

So what do you think?  Will we drop that low?  If so, when?

There were 25 straight dry days in a row, which caused Lake Lanier to drop by over 1.5 feet, but the last few days have brought some very nice rain totals to the area.  The 25 day stretch was the 21st longest dry period since 1878 — pretty impressive!

According to Ken Cook, here are some area totals from the storm:

• Athens…3.16″
• Atlanta….1.80″
• Cartersville…1.43″
• Columbus…3.03″
• Gainesville…1.64″
• Macon…1.44″
• Marietta…2.51″
• Peachtree-Dekalb…2.04″
• Peachreee City…1.96″
• Rome…1.85″
• Fulton Co. airport…1.94″