Atlanta Water Shortage

Due to the almost-normal rainfall we received in March, Gwinnett County has decided to relax hand watering restrictions to match the guidelines put out by the state of Georgia.  Specifically (as posted on the LWB):

That means you can use a hose with a hand-activated nozzle to water your plants for up to 25 minutes three days per week, on an odd-even schedule. People with even numbered addresses can water on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, while people with odd numbered addressed can water on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. All watering must be done between midnight and 8 AM. Food gardens can be watered anytime, and the you are not allowed to use your 25 minute window to wash your car.

While all of north Georgia received below-normal rainfall in March, it was pretty close:

• Atlanta recorded 5.17 inches of rain, a quarter inch less than normal.
• Gainesville had 5.25 inches of rainfall, 87% of normal.
• Athens had 3.48 inches of rain, or an 1.5 inches less than normal.

The short-term forecast is looking pretty good, but we’ve still got a steep road in front of us.

Following up on the chart we did last month, here is a look at Lanier’s level updated for this month.

All things considered, it was a pretty good month.  The lake rose another three feet, which was a bit more than some of the predictions I saw.  However, it’s still 15 feet below full pool, and 13 feet below this time last year.  Based on past history, April will probably hold close to steady, maybe falling slightly.

We’ll update again next month.  Any predictions on what April will do to the level?

For the first time since July, 2007, Georgia has moved from “exceptional” to “extreme” drought status.  While, it’s certainly an improvement, state climatologist David Stooksbury says “If this were a hospital patient, this would be like going from grave to critical”.

As you probably know, Lake Lanier is still way below normal.  It’s about 15 feet below its normal summer level, which equates to about 362 billion gallons low.

For the math on that number (please correct me if I’m wrong):

• Full pool is 2,554,000 acre-feet of water
• Lanier is currently holding around 1,443,000 acre-feet of water
• That means its down by 1,111,000 acre-feet
• There are 325,851.429 gallons per acre-foot, which means:
• 1,111,000 acre-feet = 362,020,937,619 gallons

That’s quite a lot of water.  The lake has been going up for the last few months, but it tends to plateau near the end of March and then start to drop.  It’ll be interesting to see what happens this summer.  Will we hit the magic 1035′ level (even if it’s not as bad as we thought)?  Lower than that?  What do you think?

Watercrunch tackles the big question — “is the drought over?”

In a word, no.  However, there continue to be promising signs.  The area of “exceptional drought” is getting smaller, and our forecast through May is “Drought ongoing, some improvement”, which sounds about right.

I really like the analogy that watercrunch uses: “Droughts are like a recession in a way, its hard to tell exactly when they first occur and hard to know exactly when they are over.”

Here in Georgia, we’re facing two kinds of drought:

1. The natural drought caused by a lack of rain, which might be easing up a bit.
2. The man-made drought, caused by sending billions of gallons down the river to Florida — some by mistake, some by law.

Until both of those problems are resolved, we’ll continue to be concerned. The recent rainfall has been nice, but Lanier continues to be way, way below where it should be.

Lake Lanier rose nearly six inches yesterday, the largest single-day rise since I started this blog last October.  The USGS counted 0.65 inches of rain yesterday at Buford Dam, but others have seen totals over 2 inches (in the comments).

All in all, we’re still running a little below the normal pace for the year, but we’re doing a bit better than this time last year.  However, Lanier is still much lower than it was at this time last year, so we could use a few more soaking storms.

If you measure rainfall at your house, how much have you seen in the last few days?

A story at 11Alive tells us that Gwinnett County will allow landscapers, construction companies and others to take reclaimed wastewater from the F. Wayne Hill Water Resources Center and use it for irrigation, street washing, sewer cleaning, etc.

Once again, it seems that some people don’t understand how things work. From the article:

Every day, 18 million gallons of waste water is treated at Gwinnett’s F. Wayne Hill Water Resources Center until it is clean enough to place in the Chattahoochee River. Until now, the river is exactly where the water has gone, where it has floated gently away from Bradley [local landscaper] and other businesses that need it for watering lawns or street washing.

They make it sound like putting water back into the river is a bad thing, while the opposite is actually true. The more you put into the river, the less they need to release from Lake Lanier to keep the flow rate high enough in Florida. If you put less back into the river, more water will need to be released from Lanier to compensate.

That being said, I don’t think this will make a huge difference. The water can only be taken away by certified tank truck drivers, not via pipes, which will greatly reduce how much is lost. However, it sounds like landscapers are excited to waste their share of water. Bradley Griffin of Russell Landscape Group said:

“The sky’s the limit with just how much our company can use. Multiply that by all of the other landscape companies and construction companies, this is a big deal.”

Yea!  Waste as much as you want!

However, water is already pumped from there to two golf courses, a county park, a city park and the Mall of Georgia. According to the AJC, those facilities used 209 million gallons of water last year. That makes a difference.

I’m guessing that those facilities are able to freely use the water for irrigation, since the water was just going to be “wasted” by going down the river. Anyone know what kind of restrictions those businesses are under for using that water?

EERE News is reporting on a study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography that puts the odd at 50% that Lake Mead will drop too low for power production by the year 2017 and run completely dry by 2021.

If that were to happen, it would leave about 1.3 million people without power and approximately 8 million people without water.

From Save and Conserve:

The Lake Mead/Lake Powell/Colorado River system is currently at about 50% capacity. Based on current water use & projected future demand, the system is on an unsustainable death spiral. Things are so bad that there is a 10% chance Lake Mead could be dry by 2014. That should be alarming for residents of the southwest, to say the least.

These numbers are based on forecasted climate conditions and water demand.  If either of those variable shift, it could buy them a few more years.  Still, the future looks pretty bleak for that area.

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.

11Alive has posted an article featuring Dr. David Stooksbury, a state climatologist.  He makes a few good points:

• March is the make or break month for the drought.
• We should receive about 1-1/4 inches of rain per week in March.
• Last March started out very wet, then turned dry.
• Recent rains haven’t helped the north Georgia river flows.

Based on his statement of 1-1/4 inches per week, that means we need to average about 0.17 inches per day (1.25 inches divided by 7 days in a week).

So far this month we’ve seen a total of 2.04 inches in nine days, or an average of about 0.23 inches/day, which is above average.  Lake Lanier continues to slowly refill, but it needs to get going in a hurry and start gaining some more ground on the 16 foot deficit.

I appreciate what DeKalb County is trying to do here, but it seems pretty stupid once you dig into it. Starting in a few months, if you buy an older house in DeKalb County and it doesn’t have low-flow toilets, the county won’t hook up water to your house.

The move was praised by most people. From the article:

“This is really a pretty big deal,” said Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. She said metro Atlanta will face increasing pressure to conserve water as the population grows.

Here’s the catch - DeKalb County gets their water from the Chattahoochee River and returns the wastewater there. The “wasted” water that is flushed down the old toilets goes back into the river and finds its way to Jim Woodruff Dam in Florida. This is where they measure the flow of water coming from Atlanta to determine how much more to release from Lanier. As long as the water makes it back into the river, it’s not depleting the level of the lake. Here is a post from a few weeks ago where we went into more detail about that.

Granted, not 100% of the water makes it back, so this move will save a little bit of water. Some is lost to leaks, some evaporates, etc.  However, given the horrible real estate market we’re in, anything that makes things hard on people trying to sell their house seems like a bad idea. From the article:

Barbara Campbell, president of the DeKalb Association of Realtors, wondered how the county would enforce its mandate on sellers to disclose their old toilets. Selling a house is hard enough, especially in this economy, she said. “When you’re selling your home, I don’t think you’re going to be announcing that.”

I agree.