Atlanta Water Shortage

Gov. Sonny Perdue announced today that the state is going to allow outdoor swimming pools to open this summer.  Had Perdue not taken this step, it’s unlikely that pools could have opened due to continuing Level 4 drought restrictions.  This decision affects all 61 north Georgia counties affected by the water-use ban, and it goes along with the announcement earlier today that watering restrictions would be eased a little bit.

It is estimated that swimming pools use about seven million gallons of water per day, which is less than one percent of the overall water usage in the area.

As the father of two young girls, I’m glad they’ll be able to use the neighborhood pool this summer.  However, I have to wonder if this isn’t a bit premature, as we’re still in far worse shape than we were at this time last year.   The next few months should tell us a lot.

I’ve had a very strange series of e-mails with White Water regarding their water usage, restrictions, etc. It started with me asking a few simple questions via a form on their website. This was a few weeks ago, on about January 9.

I have a lot of users asking what your status will be for this summer, in regards to the drought. While things obviously could change, it looks likely that residential swimming pools won’t be allowed to open.

Where do things stand for you right now? If today was opening day, would you legally be allowed to open? What is the outlook for your normal opening today?

Any information you can provide would be great.

Thanks!

Mickey
Atlanta Water Shortage Blog
– other contact info… –

A few days later on January 11, the following message was sent from one Six Flags staffer to two others and I was copied on it (though it appears the copy was accidental).

H—,

I have a few of these email questions coming through our Six Flags Comment System. Do you want me to forward to you to address or will we have a standard message I can use to reply to them? I have little doubt as the summer nears we will get quite a few daily.

T—-

I figured that meant I’d hear something back soon, but nothing ever arrived. I gave them a few weeks, then wrote wrote to all three WW staffers on January 22 to try to get a status.

T—-,

You copied me on this e-mail about two weeks ago (by mistake?), but I still haven’t heard a word from you. Are you able to answer these questions, or do I need to look elsewhere for the answers?

Thanks,
Mickey

Today, more than three weeks after my initial contact, they finally responded.

Dear Mickey,

Thank you for your inquiry about Six Flags White Water regarding the recent news coverage about our water rides.

As you know guest safety and guest satisfaction are always our top priorities. At this time, we are still reviewing all of our options and continuing discussions with local and state officials, as all businesses are doing regarding their water use.

Six Flags White Water opens on May 24, and we’re looking forward to another great season. In fact, Six Flags White Water was recently voted one of the nation’s 10 best water parks by industry leader, Aquatics International. For more information on Six Flags White Water or to purchases a season pass, please visit www.sixflags.com/whitewater.

Again, thank you for your inquiry and we look forward to seeing you in 2008!

Sincerely,

H— —–
Six Flags White Water

What? It almost looks like they saw “water” in my e-mail and just sent me the standard reply. I didn’t think any of my questions were overly difficult, but maybe I was wrong.

All in all, I’m not very impressed with White Water. At least give us some decent information about what’s going on, rather than garbage about how great you are.

Blech.

An article yesterday in the AJC shows some of the growing concern that parents are facing as they realize that pools might not be filled this summer.  We’ve talked about this before, but this article shows that more people are starting to realize it.

Back in September of last year, all outdoor water use was banned.  This includes filling or adding water to any outdoor pool.  As of right now, that ban is still in effect.  Some pools are making plans to fill somehow — Edgewater Subdivision may add a pump to their well to get water for the pool.

Most others are simply “hoping that it rains”, my subdivision included.

Fulton County has announced that for the second consecutive month, they have been able to reduce their water use by over the 10% goal set by the Governor.

Their usage for December, 2007 was down by 19.1% when compared to December, 2006.   Not bad, considering many water systems were unable to meet the goal in November.  I’d be curious to see how the others did in December when compared to Fulton.

The AJC just posted these two articles about metro Atlanta swimming pools. Due to the drought, it’s very likely that most won’t be able to open.

They don’t give specific numbers, only that pools won’t open “if the state’s severe drought doesn’t ease”.

Under current water restrictions, swimming pools can’t be filled. Unless we get a lot of rain in the next few months, I can’t imagine that they’ll ease the restrictions. This would be quite a shame, as our 4 and 2 year olds had a great time swimming last summer.

Along with the now-famous Chris George Carlos, Cobb County has named 10 more major water users.  While most of these people still use an awful lot of water, they’ve all cut their usage in the last month or so.

The list:

•  Clearwater Development Group (Charles P. Beall)
  • Chimney Heights
• Theodore Brand
  • Timber Ridge Road
• John Stephenson
  • Paper Mill Road
• Charles Carpenter
  • Bullard Road
• Karen O’Riordan
  • Atlanta Country Club Drive
• Melanie Willcutts
  • Little Willeo Road
• Scott Weiss
  • Green River Court
• Scott Smith
  • Paper Mill Road
• Edward Himot
  • Paper Mill Road
• Evan Demestihas
  • Knight Road
• Chris G. Carlos
  • Thunderbird Drive

I’d like to plot these addresses in Google Earth (mostly for the sake of curiosity) in a similar manner to the map on the page, but none have the full address listed.  I looked up a few of them, but came up empty.

If you can find any of the addresses, leave them in the comments and we’ll see if we can put together a nice map.

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.

As we’ve mentioned before, power plants are massive users of water.  Because of that, saving energy in your house can mean saving water.  WSAV has a nice list of tips on how to save some energy around the home.

Also, 11Alive has some new drought-related pictures on their site.  It’s amazing what happens when a lake is 20 feet low…

A few months back, Gov. Sonny Perdue mandated all Atlanta-area water systems to cut their usage by 10% when compared to their monthly average from last winter.  The numbers from November are in, and not everyone made it to the 10% goal.  Some of the totals that were listed in the article:

• Atlanta - “about 7%”
• Cobb County - “just barely” met the 10% goal
• DeKalb - 8.3%
• Fulton County - “just made it under the new target”
• Gwinnett - Maybe, maybe not — depends on how you read the numbers.

Those that didn’t make it to the goal will likely see some fines sent their way.  Those fines will likely work their way into their customer’s water bills.

I feel kind of bad for some of them.  For example, as Francis Kung’u, director of DeKalb County Department of Watershed Management said — “We were very close” and that they “tried everything to get customers to conserve and even had water employees patrol at night to catch watering ban violators.”  What else could they do to force their customers to conserve more?

Of course, the best way to get these goals to be met would be to simply lay down tougher restrictions.  I keep thinking that they’ll tighten them pretty soon, but it hasn’t happened yet.

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.