Atlanta Water Shortage

Tiny Dade County in northwest Georgia has always been an afterthought.  They weren’t included on the state quarter, they have a sparse population, and they are essentially isolated in the corner of the state.

However, the growing fight for access to the Tennessee River is going right through Dade, because it is the Georgia county that is closest to the river.

Newsmax has a nice article that covers this whole situation pretty well.  Thanks to Gary for the link!

An article in the AJC today tries to answer the question: “Can reservoirs ease Georgia’s drought?”

I don’t think more reservoirs will help us in the short-term, but certainly could be a big part of the long-term solution.  There are a number of reservoirs underway in Georgia, but the article doesn’t talk about much in the way of specific data about them.  What it does say:

• There are a dozen being built in Georgia, seven in metro Atlanta.
• Most of these proposed reservoirs are between 150-800 acres (compared to Lanier’s 38,000 acres).
• There are eight more that have been approved since 2000, and “most have been built”.
• The total capacity of those eight is around 200 million gallons/day.

The article says that the 200 million gallons coming from the eight completed reservoirs is more than enough for Atlanta and Fulton County, but it doesn’t mention if those reservoirs are full and active, or dry and waiting.

Anyone have a good list of active/pending reservoirs, their size/capacity and their current status?  It would be interesting to see what the situation really looks like.

As reported by Water Crunch, it appears that Raleigh, North Carolina is down to about 108 days worth of water (with no future rainfall factored in).

While I’m quite concerned about this, I wonder how accurate the number is.  As we’ve seen before, those kinds of estimates can vary wildly from source to source.   If nothing else, it appears they have about 87 days worth of water left after the “regular supply” runs out, bringing their total to about 195 days.  Even with low rainfall totals, that should stretch out a few months beyond that.  Still, it’s not looking good.

Hopefully the next few months bring much needed rain to all of us.

(thanks to Craig for the link)  Despite Sen. Richard Shelby’s ridiculous objections, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plan to move forward on updating the operating manuals for the ACF river system.

Parts of the manuals have not been updated since they were first written in 1958 and obviously need an overhaul. As Senator Saxby Chambliss points out, “for the ACF Basin, the only approved master manual was prepared in 1958 and does not even include the federal facilities at West Point, Walter F. George or George W. Andrews.”

As with other recent moves, this is unlikely to offer any benefit in the near future.  However, it’s nice to see they’re at least doing something to help the long-term outlook.

According to an article in the AJC (thanks to Gary for the link), some nuclear reactors in the southeast could be forced to shut down later this year due to the drought.  While this likely wouldn’t lead to blackouts, it could result in electric bills going up 10 times higher.  Ouch!

Some quotes of interest from the article:

•  “…Lake Norman near Charlotte is down to 93.7 feet – less than a foot above the minimum set in the license for Duke Energy Corp.’s McGuire nuclear plant.  The lake was at 98.2 feet just a year ago…”
• “…[this] could lead to shockingly higher electric bills for millions of Southerners, because the region’s utilities could be forced to buy expensive replacement power from other energy companies…”
• “…Currently, nuclear power costs between $5 to $7 to produce a megawatt hour…It would cost 10 times that amount if you had to buy replacement power – especially during the summer…”

I don’t think that Georgia has any plants in such a dire situation yet, but things could certainly change.

I’d be curious to know what would happen to the cost of power in Atlanta if one or more of the plants in North Carolina had to shut down.  I’m sure the price increase would have a ripple effect, but how much?

The annual Peachtree Road Race, the Atlanta Pride Festival, the Atlanta Jazz Festival and the Dogwood Festival have all been moved from Piedmont Park to undecided locations because of the drought.

According to an article on WSB, the “drought has taken a toll on the park’s 185 acres and the park cannot withstand the heavy traffic the major events bring”.

Seems odd to me that they’d go through the trouble to move these events (certainly not a small task) to try to not “disrupt the park’s turf”.  Is it really in that bad of shape?

Val Perry, the executive vice president of the Lake Lanier Association has said that he feels the true motive behind the water war might be economic competition.

Mr. Perry said “If you can disrupt our water flow and the amount of storage we have, Florida and Alabama would be the beneficiaries of that.”

What do you think?

(note: Guest post by Craig Sears)

County Health Departments across the metro Atlanta area are rightfully concerned about the health hazards of unmaintained pools, which will occur if pools are not allowed to open this summer.  Unmaintained pools can quickly turn into breeding grounds for mosquitoes that spread West Nile virus, and bacteria.

The use of mosquito killing chemicals might help, but would be totally unenforceable, and installing pool covers would be very expensive and still may not prevent mosquitoes from propagating.

County Health Departments will be unable and unprepared to enforce proper pool maintenance by homeowners.  Draining pools is not a good solution either because:

1. Leaving a pool drained for an extended period of time (like the entire summer) can cause structural damage to the pool itself, without the weight of the water in it.
2. After the first rain, we’re back where we started, with a stagnant pool of water.
3. Why would we want to waste all the perfectly good water we have in our pools when we are in the middle of a drought?

According to John Gormley, there were 9 confirmed cases of West Nile in Fulton county in Summer 2007.  Furthermore, there is a new mosquito spread disease found in Europe now with much higher mortality rates.  He quoted 40-50% in a presentation he gave to the APSP (Association of Pool and Spa Professionals) on January 8 at the Georgia Pool and Spa Forum in Roswell.

I’ve asked John for further documentation about this new disease.  When I have further specific information, I will add comments to this article.

Craig

Here is an article in today’s Detroit Free Press about the concern of northern states that we’re going to try to get some of their water.

It’s not a far-fetched fear.  Various states have proposed pipelines from the Great Lakes to their part of the country, going back many years.  Of course, the Great Lakes have their own problems and are near record low levels (down a few feet in most cases).

Michigan is trying hard to get legislation passed quickly that will protect their water.  With more and more people moving south, Michigan is losing seats in the House of Representatives.  The more seats they lose, the harder it will be to protect their water.

Here’s an odd story of a 750,000 gallon water tower in North Carolina that was shot a few times by a high-powered rifle.  The only way officials say it can be repaired is from inside the tank, so they’re going to let it drain and then try to fix it (at a price of nearly $20,000).

They’re in a pretty bad drought up there as well, so it seems like they could find a way to apply a temporary fix to the outside of the tank until it drained from normal use.  Otherwise, they’re going to waste quite a lot of water.