Atlanta Water Shortage

Lake Allatoona is now a little above its typical summer level of 840′, sitting at 841.07′ right now.  That’s quite a turnaround, and it’s quite good.

However, Lake Lanier is still well below normal, sitting just above 1057′ (full is 1071′).

Regular readers of this blog should understand why Lanier is still so low.  For any newcomers, or anyone that doesn’t understand the problems that are unique to Lake Lanier, 11Alive has a nice article that covers some of the basics of Lanier’s problems.  It’s a good overview to check out.

Things are still looking really ugly for Lake Lanier, but Lake Allatoona has somehow gotten back up to its normal winter level.

Granted, that means its still about 17 feet below its normal summer pool level, but that is normal for this time of year.  In fact, if the lake was any higher than it is right now, the Army Corps would have lowered it to this level anyhow (hopefully not during a drought, though).

I find it interesting that Allatoona has been able to rise about five feet in the last month, while Lanier has only gone up by about six inches.  I guess it’s all of the downstream interests pulling water out of Lanier, while Allatoona has far fewer obligations of that nature.

Creative Loafing has an interesting spin on people that are starting to stockpile water — they might be contributing to the water problem.

It’s a relatively low number, but Coca-Cola’s Dasani bottling plant in Marietta uses better than 8 million gallons of water per month, all which comes from Lake Allatoona.  As Thomas Wheatley, the author of the article, told me — “I wrote about the sheer irony that if we ran out of water, we’d be drinking just preserved stuff of what we watched dwindle away.”

The article also gets into the crazy pricing system for water (the more they use, the less they pay), but also talks about how Coca-Cola has made strides in the last few years to cut back.  It’s a good read.

State officials don’t have much of a plan in place because they don’t think it’s very likely that we’ll run out of water.

Tim Cash, the chairman of the state’s Drought Response Working Group said:

“We have not gotten to the planning stages for someone running out of water because we don’t think we’re even close to being there… Right now, I don’t have a vision for a worst-case scenario.“

He also said that:

“nobody out there is at imminent peril of their water supply disappearing tomorrow“.

I think we knew that.  We’re more worried about next year.   Mr. Cash seems to agree:

“We are trying to anticipate what could be further down the road in ‘08 if the drought continues to worsen, which I believe everyone is expecting it to do.“

Let me get this straight; he agrees that the drought will likely get worse next year, but doesn’t even need to consider a worst-case scenario?  In addition, they’re…

“not talking to the city of Atlanta.  The city of Atlanta water supply looks good.“

I know it looks pretty good right now, but we’re talking about millions of people, which will require the most preparation in case of disaster.  You’d hope they were at least discussing things at this point.

In a similar vein Buzz Weiss, a spokesman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency said:

“I don’t really think there’s a sense we’ll be at a point where there is no water.“

All of this worries me a little bit.  We’ve still got a good bit of water left, but no one knows what next year will bring.  If it’s dry, we could potentially be in big trouble.  I had assumed that the state was starting to get plans to together to prepare for that possibility, but it seems I was wrong.

I’m not suggesting we panic quite yet (we’ve still got roughly 150 days left) , but the “just in case” planning needs to get in gear.

Anyhow, read the article at the AJC for the full story.

The Army Corps of Engineers have decided to reduce the flow out of Lake Allatoona by 40-50 percent, in an effort to keep more water available in the lake for 2008.

However, the article doesn’t give many details.  When will this reduction start?  What reasons were given for the reduction?  If it can be done now, why couldn’t it have been done earlier?

If any of you have more information about this, please post in the comments below.

A handful of useful links for today:

•  The AP has a story about what kind of steps might need to be taken if we run out of water.  It discusses some of the water being stockpiled for the city, what Macon did when they ran out of water 13 years ago, and what cities like Durham (NC) and Athens are faced with right now.
• 11Alive says that the meeting schedule for next Monday between the Georgia, Florida and Alabama governors has been postponed by one week.  This meeting should help to set-up a long term agreement of some sort between the states.
• The AJC discusses some of the issues that are popping up as the lake levels drop.  Among the problems:
  • The lowest intake on Lake Allatoona may need some work, since it hasn’t been used since the mid-1960’s.  If the intake doesn’t work, they plan to spend $600,000 (plus $250,000/month) to run a mile-long pipe into deeper water.
  • Cumming continues to dredge the lake in an effort to access deeper water (as we mentioned a few weeks ago).  This dredging is stirring up so much sediment that the water plant has been shut down onsome days.
  • Some water in Cobb County had a greenish hue this summer from an excess of manganese.  The article didn’t say it, but it sounds like we might see more of that as the lakes get lower.

The Corps sent a warning letter today to the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority, saying that they might be taking too much water from Lake Allatoona.

By law, the authority can take up to 34.5 million gallons per day, but they’ve been far exceeding it. The authority claims that since they give back millions of gallons each day in the form of treated sewage, they only need to make sure the difference is under 34.5M gallons. The Corps say that the returned sewage doesn’t count.

This situation is sure to please Alabama officials who have been asking for more downstream releases from the lake

With the water level in Lake Allatoona also getting quite low, the city of Atlanta may no longer be able to use it as a secondary source of water, as the residents in Cobb, Douglas and Paulding counties will need to conserve what is left.

It’s kind of a confusing situation, but you can read the whole story at the AJC.