www.sundaypaper.comBy Mark Woolsey Known for its lush, subtropical climate, Georgia has been plagued by 18 months of drought. And metro Atlantans, faced with evaporating reservoirs, are scared.“I am very concerned,” says Yvette Davis, of Marietta, after picking up a free low-flow shower head from the Cobb County Water System during Cobb County’s annual Family Fun Fest on Marietta Square in mid-October. Volunteers at the festival handed out the water-saving showerheads and extolled the virtues of shorter showers and xeri-scaping—planting grass, trees and shrubs that don’t require irrigation. But Davis says she is still resentful of Georgia’s water compact with its neighboring states.
“The fact that they’re saying the lakes might dry up soon and they’re still letting water go to Alabama and Florida, I don’t think it’s fair or right,” she says. “Something needs to be done.”Her fellow festivalgoers had plenty of ideas about what to do. Cut down on rampant development. Quit covering more acres each day with concrete and asphalt. Close down the car washes. Quit planting water-thirsty grass and shrub varieties. Put the brakes on landscapers. Protect Lake Lanier’s dwindling supply—to hell with endangered or threatened Florida mussels and Gulf sturgeon. Take shorter showers. Water plants with “grey water.”For the first time, water rationing is a real possibility in steamy, historically rain-soaked Georgia.
“That would be steep, but it would cause more of us to pay attention to what we need to do,” admits Davis. “But I certainly hope we don’t get to that point.”
Kathy Nguyen, Cobb Water System’s water conservation coordinator, says rations could take the form of a monthly allotment, with penalties for exceeding the limit.
We’re not rationing yet, but state Environmental Protection Division Chair Carol Couch is preparing a slate of further restrictions for Governor Sonny Perdue to promulgate. While nobody at the EPD is talking specifics, there have been suggestions that the next step—beyond the Level 4 response, banning almost all outdoor watering—could target those still allowed to use water outdoors, such as landscaping businesses.“Under Georgia law, priorities are set for water use during emergencies,” says EPD Spokesman Kevin Chambers. “No. 1 is health and safety, No. 2 is agriculture and No. 3 is commercial and industrial uses. So what would happen next would be to look at commercial and industrial uses and try to make adjustments in that area to reduce water use.”
A PERFECT STORMState officials have come up with a Comprehensive Statewide Water Management Plan, submitted to the state’s Water Council in late June. A series of 12 public meetings on the plan wrapped up last week. The preamble lays out the problem starkly: “Georgia’s current approach to water management has evolved piecemeal over several decades,” as a result of recurring droughts and federal legislative mandates.As they say, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. The piecemeal approach has worked well for development in the metro area, which has routinely proceeded full steam ahead without regard to its impact on Lake Lanier, Lake Allatoona and what is said to be one of the smallest river basin systems to support a major city in the U.S.
The timing of such development couldn’t have been worse. A “La Nina”-type climate pattern has emerged for this winter, favoring dry and mild weather across the Southeast. That’s dangerous, because as state Climatologist David Stooksbury puts it, “winter is traditionally when big, sloppy low-pressure systems form along the Gulf and meander across Georgia and replenish the lakes and rivers.”
This winter, for the second year in a row, that just might not happen. Already, many streams across Georgia are setting records for low flow. Some hydrologists talk ominously of what they think could turn into a long-term drier cycle linked to climate change.Caught in the middle of all this is the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is under federal mandate to release water from Lanier into the Chattahoochee River to protect downstream mussels and sturgeon species and enable a Florida power plant to operate. Downstream cities such as Columbus depend on the ‘Hooch’ for their water supply, and, as the EPD’s Chambers points out, a certain level of flow has to be maintained to allow proper assimilation of treated wastewater back into the beleaguered river.
So we have a perfect storm of factors draining away metro Atlanta’s water, with no real storms to alleviate the problem in sight. How then to avoid what conceivably could become a water panic?
The courts may provide some short-term relief. Metro Atlanta Chamber President Sam Williams joined numerous state and local officials asking the Corps to reconsider its release of large amounts of water. State officials are reportedly said to be considering a lawsuit if the Corps doesn’t curtail its millions-of-gallons-a-day release.
There has been talk of Lanier turning into a mudhole within three months, but Pat Robbins, public affairs officer for the Corps’ Mobile (Ala.) District, says that’s an overstatement.“If absolutely nothing changes in the next three months, including no rain,” he says, “we will probably reach the bottom of the conservation pool. Water could still be supplied at that level but at a different rate.”
UNCHARTED TERRITORY
But how far below that level could the reservoirs dwindle and still slake metro Atlanta’s voracious thirst? Several feet—he thinks. Robbins admits to not really knowing, because the Corps would be operating in uncharted territory.
“I can characterize this drought as unprecedented,” he says. “We are looking at every option to preserve as much water as possible.” Robbins further points out that minimum flow requirements could come from anywhere in the basin, not necessarily just Lake Lanier.
Charting a course out of those dry and rocky shoals will require a twinned approach, says Todd Rasmussen, a professor of hydrology and water resources at the University of Georgia. A good short-term fix, he says, would be an unrelenting multimedia campaign pushing individual and collective conservation measures.
“We’re talking a state lottery-style campaign here,” he says. “If you saturate radio and TV, people will get the message real quick”
Long-term solutions, he says, include getting water-intensive industries to reduce their “footprint,” even developing a state fund to help industries work toward that goal; actively recruiting less water-intensive business and industry to the state; and a large-scale program of switching to reclaimed wastewater, so-called “purple water,” for landscaping and other outdoor uses.As climatologist Stooksbury puts it, “It’s going to have to go beyond just building another reservoir.”
Such a new reservoir is in the pipeline for North Georgia, but is some years away, according to water management officials. Middle and south Georgia, on the other hand, rely a great deal more on groundwater pumped up through wells from aquifers, as opposed to surface water. That’s partly why less stringent Level 2 restrictions exist there, permitting some outdoor watering. But North Georgia’s Piedmont region doesn’t have as large a porous layer, so the groundwater is not abundant. And getting to it would entail drilling through granite—a prohibitively expensive project. Some have brought up the idea of siphoning off the headwaters of the Savannah River, from which Augusta and Savannah pull their water, but Rasmussen says it has not met with favor.
“There was talk of a small diversion in the Clarksville area, where they’d take water from a tiny stream from the headwaters of the Savannah and pump it over a mountain to the headwaters of the Chattahoochee,” he says, “but there was tremendous political opposition to that, a couple of years ago.”
LOOK WEST
Getting back to the development issue, Rasmussen notes that some Western states have long-standing guidelines that allow them to refuse to extend utilities to businesses and developers not adhering to stringent water restriction policies.
“It would be good to have a sit-down between the chambers [of commerce], the banks and the developers so that industry realizes what needs to be done,” he says. “So at least in part it has to be a partnership, instead of being imposed externally.”
Some of that Western sensibility appears to be spreading to Georgia. The statewide water management document, mandated by a 2004 state law, mentions planning and allocating water use on a “watershed” basis, crossing traditional jurisdictional lines. It lays out a framework for policies governing integrated water management in Georgia, provides for assessment of water capacity, lays out a “toolbox” of water management practices and provides for a regional approach to water management allowing for spot applications of the best approaches appropriate to different parts of the state. And it gives the Environmental Protection Division the muscle to enforce laws.
The 16-county Metro North Georgia Planning District has been operating under its own plan for four years. Well in advance of other similar bodies, its plan calls for aggressive conservation, new reservoirs and reclamation by recycling highly treated wastewater through reservoirs.
Those measures are second nature in the parched West. Doug Bennett, conservation manager of the nearly two decade-old Southern Nevada Water Authority, echoes Rasmussen’s notion that any regional planning and allocation work has to entail a buy-in from stakeholders including developers, business owners and environmental groups.
Interconnection with other water utilities and the watershed approach, he says, are ongoing realities in his region.
“We have water banking with the state of Arizona,” says Bennett, “water stored that we can call upon in times of drought or need.”
There’s an ongoing consensus in Vegas, he continues, that “wherever development occurs, that’s where water will go, regardless of jurisdictional boundaries.”
Homes typically have xeri-scaping out front, and “oasis-scaping” in the back. Water is captured by native vegetation and returned to the atmosphere, and helps to cool the house.
“We got the homebuilders on board,” he says. “They realize what the trade-offs are.”Among other tools in their water toolbox: New customer water connection fees pay for conservation measures, and Nevada is paying people to convert their lawns to so-called “water smart” xeri-scaping.
The suite of controls and restrictions, Bennett says, has saved 20 billion gallons of water since 2002, while the metro Las Vegas area has grown by 330,000 people. It seems to be an operational model that historically water-profligate areas should take a close look at.
Water management experts say that Georgia’s “historic” drought crisis will require some stiff medicine of a kind that few have seen. During droughts in California and Hawaii, restrictions like those being considered by the EPD have been instituted, but such examples have been few and far between.
People like East Cobb resident and Fun Fest attendee Chuck Davidson are worried, but hopeful. Davidson still sees the odd lawn-waterer in defiance of the ban, he says, but he thinks he and his neighbors are prepared for some strong medicine to get through the current crisis—even if it requires holding one’s nose.“We’re following that policy of saving water in the bathroom by saying ‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow, but if it’s brown, flush it down,” he laughs.
As conservation coordinator Nguyen puts it: “I don’t think anybody ever thought we’d be here.”
Types of landscaping and their water use:
1. Lawn-scaping requires lots of water and helps cool the house to a certain extent, but is not optimal because there is no shade.
2. Zero-scaping (rock, gravel, concrete or asphalt) requires no direct watering, but heats up the house and actually uses more water overall because of the water used to generate electricity for air-conditioning.
3. Xeri-scaping requires no direct watering and uses drought-resistant vegetation that provides shade. The shade helps cool the house so that air-conditioning water requirements are reduced.
4. Oasis-scaping requires slightly more irrigation water for a small lawn, garden or water feature at the back of the house, but reduces air-conditioning water requirements the most.
Source: Todd Rasmussen, UGA
