Atlanta Water Shortage

A press release from the Governors office today unveiled a contest for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders to develop a water conservation plan for their community.  The contest winner will receive $2000 to implement the plan in their area.  You can view the full PDF of the announcement here.

While I think that encouraging kids to think more about water conservation is a good thing, Perdue really needs to start doing things that will make a real difference now.  So far this week we’ve had this and the controversial prayer vigil.  That’s about it.  Where’s a real plan?  I’d like to see the governor develop and share two things:

1 - A plan to conserve water and/or get more water to the area to prevent disaster.  “Pray for rain” has been his best plan so far.
2 - In the event that we run out of water, develop a plan to deal with the aftermath, similar to how Lawrenceville already has.

Contests like this are cute, but time is running out.

After all of the outrage about the house in Cobb County that used 440,000 gallons of water in October, the owner has said he plans to drastically cut his usage.

According to the AJC, his usage for the past week has been about 2,000 gallons a day, which would be around 60,000 gallons a month.  That’s still very high, but it’s far better than the 440,000 from last month.

As many people suggested, it sounds like he had indeed been watering his lawn.  These two snippets from the article seem to confirm that.

First, we have this:  “He was very humble. It is my understanding he told his landscaper to stop all watering last week,” said County Spokesman Robert Quigley, who called Carlos.

Last week?  He shouldn’t have been watering at that point.  Also, the article says “Carlos was not doing anything illegal before Cobb limited outdoor watering on Sept. 20.“  That implies that he might have been doing things that were illegal after Sept. 20.

That still doesn’t explain where all of the water was going, but it’s nice to see he’s cutting back.

(via AWS reader Vince) North Carolina is facing similar issues as us in this drought, but they seem to be doing a better job of cutting back on their usage.

According to this article, North Carolina has cut its water usage by about 30%.  This is short of the 50% reduction that Governor Mike Easley was aiming for, but it’s much better than the 9% reduction (which is 15-20% if you just want to make up some numbers) that we’ve seen from metro Atlanta.

We need to start stepping up.

(via AWS reader David O’Bannon) Lawrenceville appears to be the first metro-area city to develop a plan in case the water runs dry.

Part of their plan is to reopen some old wells, which we knew about a few weeks ago. They’ve taken that further and they’re working on plans to determine how best to distribute that water. Part of the plan involves pickup-mounted 200 and 300 gallon water tanks that would distribute water at four points throughout the city. The four distribution points are:

• Central Gwinnett High School
• The old K-Mart at the corner of Duluth Highway and Hurricane Shoals Road
• Margaret Winn Holt Elementary School
• The parking lot adjacent to the Rhodes Jordan Plant at the intersection of US 29 and Highway 124.

Residents would be allowed to bring one-gallon jugs to fill.

Councilman Mike Crow put it best — “Hopefully, nothing like this will ever occur in Lawrenceville, but we need to move forward to obtain the equipment and support for the Utilities Department to implement the plan.” That’s the thought that every part of north Georgia should have right now.

In addition, Crawford Long/Emory Hospital has reportedly stockpiled 40,000 gallons of bottled water, and have additional water stored beneath the hospital.

I expect we’ll see many more of these plans being developed over the next few weeks, as the lake level goes lower and lower. While there seems to be little that can be done to remedy the drought in the near-term, there is a lot of planning that needs to be done in case things eventually run dry. Props to Lawrenceville for being the first to take that step.

According to 11Alive, a variety of new water saving measures are expected to be put into place today.  They include:

Dekalb County

• Homes build before 1993 will be required to install low-flow bathroom fixtures before they can be resold
• Stricter outdoor watering penalties — first a written warning, then a $250 fine, then a $500 fine, then the water is cut off.  Still seems too lenient to me…

 Gwinnett County

• Tougher fines, including $1000 for repeat offenders and doubling the water rate for large users that don’t cut back by at least 10%.
• Possibly a $100 per toilet rebate for people who replace older toilets with low-flow models, similar to what Cobb County did a few weeks ago.
• Ban on commercial pressure washing.
• Ban on car washing that doesn’t use recycled water.
• Reduction in the amount of time that landscapers will be allowed to water new lawns.

Cobb County

• Possibly will spend $250,000 to replace about 500 toilets in 77 public buildings with low-flow models.

Sandy Springs

• Possibly tougher outdoor watering rules, including banning commercial pressure washing and car washing.

Please note that none of these new regulations are in effect yet, but will be considered today.

I’ve had a number of e-mails asking me to highlight this story, so I thought I would.

There’s a house in Cobb County that is using over 400,000 gallons of water per month — as much as about 60 normal homes.  While there is no evidence of water violations, it certainly seems extreme.

As was mentioned in this video on CNN, the homeowners name is Chris George Carlos.  I have no idea how it’s even possible to use that much water in a month without just leaving all of the sinks on full-time.  Any idea what he’s doing?

For your geeky side, Google Earth Hacks has a file you can download to view the house in Google Earth.

In a move that has saved about 10,000 gallons/day, UPS is using a waterless washing system called “dry mopping” on its fleet of 225 trucks in Roswell.  They essentially just use furniture polish on the trucks, and it apparently does a pretty good job.

I saw a few police cars coming from our local station a few days ago that were very obviously just washed (dripping with water), so it seems that the local government hasn’t followed this idea yet.  I think it’s time for them to step up too.

With freezing temperatures finding their way to most north Georgia counties recently, the JIC has posted a list of suggestions on how to help prevent your pipes from freezing.

As you probably know, a frozen pipe could cause a major water leak in your house.  Not only would that be a huge waste of water, but could cost you thousands of dollars in repairs.

Some of the tips include:

•  Leave cabinet doors open so that heat can reach those pipes more easily.
• Let warm water drip overnight from a faucet on an outside wall.  Be sure to capture the water in a bucket for use in other areas.
• Disconnect garden hoses.

They’ve got a handful of other tips in there as well.  Check them out.

Ice Guys, the company that will be installing the ice skating rink at Centennial Olympic Park this year, announced that they’ll be trucking in the water needed for the rink.

They weren’t specifically told anything about a ban on water for the use of the rink, but officials “felt it would be better if the water came from a place where it isn’t in such short supply.”

Car washes are working hard on a PR campaign to educate the public about their water usage. To their credit, car washes use a rather low amount of water — less than 1% of the total water usage in a given municipality. Specifically, the average professional car wash uses between 34-50 gallons.

However, it still seems to me that washing your car is just a great way to waste water. Even if it only used one gallon per wash, it’s still a gallon of water that doesn’t need to be wasted. I’ve said before that I feel bad for people that are losing jobs as a result of the drought, but I think preserving our water supply should be the top priority.

No one is really sure how much water we have left, but all of them have it measured in a matter of months. With a dry winter coming, we are almost surely going to be in a critical state by spring. Whether we actually run out or not is still unknown, but it’s entirely possible.

I appreciate the efforts that car washes are putting forth to conserve water, but I just think it’s a vanity we can do without for a while. Be proud of your dirty car.