Atlanta Water Shortage

As reported by Watercrunch, Georgia’s General Assembly ratified a new statewide water plan.  Some notable pieces:

• 11 water planning districts will be created
• It will be about a year before they’re up and running
• The cost for this effort is estimated around $36 million
• The amended budget includes:
  • $40 million for reservoirs and other needs
  • $500K for upgrades to 20 dams

The Watercrunch blog entry has the full details.

With the session starting today, the drought figures to be a key issue for Georgia’s lawmakers.  This article at 11Alive makes it sound like they’ll be working hard to get something done, which I don’t doubt.  Carol Couch, director of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division said “At the end of this session, there will be a water plan.”

The article doesn’t get into too many specific ideas, but here are a few they bring up:

• Build more reservoirs.
• More requirements regarding use of low-flow showers, toilets, etc.
• Target leaks in local water systems.

None of that is new, but it’d be nice to see them actually do something rather than simply continue to talk about it.

Water Crunch has a nice list of the “5 water bills to watch in 2008″.  All of these bills are in Congress right now.

None have a direct, short-term impact on the southeast, but most of them could benefit everyone in the long run.

Check out the full list.

Back in October, the Army Corps of Engineers said that it would work on rewriting the manuals that guide how water is shared throughout the ACT (Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa) river basin.  Given the current situation, that seems like a very good idea.

However, Senator Shelby is doing his best to prevent that.  To quote from the article on 11Alive:

Georgia lawmakers are blasting Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama for slipping language into a massive end-of-year spending bill, blocking the federal government from updating the manuals that guide water-sharing in the region.

I realize that he wants to keep more water in his state, but this is a bit overboard.  Given that the governors are at least trying to work together, this seems really short-sighted.  To quote Senator Saxby Chambliss, it’s “mind boggling”.

(via Fresh Loaf) An editorial in Sunday’s Macon Telegraph gives a great summary of the problems facing the new water plan.

From the article:

The Ledger Enquirer said, “organizing the allocation of increasingly scarce water resources along lines that never had anything to do with water makes about as much sense as picking the musicians in an orchestra on the basis of height. The fact that this approach to water management was injected into a two-year-old discussion less than a week before the last round of public forums has a fine-print, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” feel to it, especially for downstreamers.”

As an added bonus, we get a brief mention in the fourth paragraph. Nice!

Check it out.

(via Freshloaf)  The director of Florida’s Dept. of Environmental Protection has sent a letter to the Corps in which they complain about the reduced flow out of Lake Lanier.  The flow was reduced by 5% last month, but Florida says that the lack of water from the river is increasing the salinity in the bay, which is killing oysters.

The oysters in Apalachicola Bay depend on a rather specific mix of fresh water (from the river) and salt water (from the ocean) to stay alive.  In addition, the fresh water helps to stave off predators that require saltier water to survive.

It should be interesting to see where this debate ends up…

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 Tennessee River is once again begin discussed as a possible solution to our water problem.  The river moves a massive amount of water through Chattanooga — roughly 34,300 cfs, which is about 17 times greater than the amount being released through Buford Dam.

The problem, of course, is politics.  Tennessee understandably doesn’t want to part with their water. However, Atlanta might be able to offer a few things in exchange for some water.

First, Chattanooga is concerned that Atlanta might want to build a second airport in the northern part of the state.  If we ruled out that possibility it might help. The second exchange might involve building a high-speed rail line from Atlanta to Chattanooga.  $8 million has been put aside to study the possibility of building that rail line, which would eliminate the need for a second airport.

It could cost about $5 billion to pump water from Chattanooga (and another $10 billion to pump the used water back, which some people think should be done).  The article doesn’t mention how long it would take to build the pipes to handle that, but I’d have to think it would take a few years.  If anyone has a good answer for that, please post in the comments below.  If we’re talking about a couple of years to get this done, it becomes more of a long-term solution than a short-term fix and we’re still in big trouble in a few months.

Of course, none of this would matter if our cheap governor in the early 1800’s hadn’t caused the state line to be placed a mile too far south.

We mentioned a few weeks ago that DeKalb County was planning on requiring all homes build before 1993 to be retrofitted with low-flow toilets and shower heads before they could be resold.  According to the Freshloaf Blog (whose source was a press release by the Atlanta Board of Realtors), “the lobbying group inundated commissioners with phone calls opposing the DeKalb ordinance.” The realtors fear that this ordinance would negatively impact the real estate market in the county.

If passed, this ordinance could save the county about 3.5 million gallons of water per day.  The cost to retrofit most homes would typically be less than $450 — money which would be recouped within about three years from lower water bills.

The commissioners will vote on the ordinance on Wednesday, December 5th.  Here is a PDF with the “Retrofit on Resale” legislation that has been proposed.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided that the flow from Lake Lanier can be reduced, but the flow cannot go down by 16% as first planned (view the PDF that they released).  Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has said that Florida may sue if less water is sent to them, so expect that to happen shortly.

Instead, they’re allowing a 10% reduction (5% at first, 10% soon after), which cuts the necessary flow in Florida from 5,000 cfs (3.23 billion gallons/day) to 4,500 cfs (2.9 billion gallons/day).

Some news agencies are a bit confused about what this means. This does not mean a 10% reduction in the amount of water coming from Lake Lanier. It means a 10% reduction in the amount of water that must reach Apalachicola Bay, which then results in an unknown reduction in the amount released from Lake Lanier.

To maintain the necessary flow rate at the bay, the Corps has to factor in all of the water users south of Buford dam, as well as all of the small creeks and tributaries that feed back in. Because of the creeks that feed into the river, Lanier can provide less than 5,000 cfs and the river will gain the rest of the water from other sources as it heads south.

The outflow from Lanier varies a bit from day to day, but 3,500 cfs is a typical number lately. Assuming that was consistent, it could now drop to 3,000 cfs which would be about a 15% reduction. I think that’s a fair number to use for now.

Of course if things keep drying up, those other creeks and tributaries will provide less and less water the river, which means the releases from Lanier will need to slowly keep climbing.  Also, as we’ve said before, as the lake level gets lower the level will begin to drop faster and faster.

I’ve heard a number of sources say that this means that instead of 79 days left (still don’t know how they came to that number), we now have more than a year.  I have no clue where that number came from.  Anyone have any idea?