Forum: Water efficiency is metro Atlanta's best bet

December 10, 2009
By Ben Emanuel | Athens Banner-Herald

Across Georgia, people are realizing the tri-state water war affects water supply planning not just in metro Atlanta, but in every part of the state.

Nearly five months after Judge Paul Magnuson's federal ruling on Lake Lanier's water, the state's prospective response is beginning to take shape. Under Magnuson's ruling, the states of Georgia, Alabama and Florida have three years to develop an agreement for use of the Chattahoochee River, which was impounded decades ago to form Lake Lanier and in the years since has become metro Atlanta's major water supply. That's despite the fact - noted in the ruling - that supplying water wasn't among the purposes for which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers established the lake.

So how is the state responding to the ruling?

"It's starting to look as if the fix might be in for metropolitan Atlanta's water woes," the Banner-Herald editorial board opined Nov. 29, "and the potential fallout could be problematic for this part of the state."

Why the concern?

Just before Thanksgiving, Gov. Sonny Perdue convened the second meeting of his "Water Contingency Task Force," an ostensibly statewide group of more than 80 business and government leaders that includes just four representatives of conservation organizations and is weighted toward metro-area interests. State-hired consultants presented task force members with numerous water supply options and asked members to rank them.

According to reports, and to materials presented to the task force, the menu was heavy on engineering solutions while downplaying proven, cost-effective solutions rooted in improved water efficiency and conservation. The Georgia Water Coalition has shown task force staffers how metro Atlanta can save more than 200 million gallons of water a day - more than the amount currently withdrawn from Lake Lanier - through efficiency improvements and policy changes in water pricing and metering.

Combined with a likely partial reauthorization of Lake Lanier for water supply - which task force members were asked to assume won't happen - these efficiency-based solutions could hold down the price tag on metro Atlanta's response to the Magnuson ruling, while also putting Georgia in a better bargaining position for its negotiations with Alabama and Florida.

Yet the task force is looking at, among other things, several new reservoirs in the counties ringing metro Atlanta. One of those is the planned Hard Labor Creek reservoir in southeastern Walton County. Walton and Oconee counties are partnering on this reservoir, to be filled with water pumped from the Apalachee River. Oconee County Commission Chairman Melvin Davis has said that, given the economic slowdown, the county probably won't need Hard Labor Creek water as soon as it thought it would - a situation that would seem to set up a convenient water-for-money swap with metro Atlanta. Indeed, Oconee County Commissioner Jim Luke has described a meeting with Gwinnett County officials on this topic, and Walton and Oconee leaders met with state officials to discuss it in August.

But piping Apalachee River water uphill into Gwinnett County would raise questions. First, would Walton and Oconee counties seek to get that water back one day, when they decide they need it? Second, would water piped to Gwinnett return to the Apalachee/Oconee river basin? Only a small portion of Gwinnett County drains to the Apalachee; most of the county drains to the Ocmulgee or Chattahoochee rivers. Current state law prohibiting an interbasin transfer of water from outside the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District into the district would seem to be pertinent.

Attempting to solve part of metro Atlanta's water crisis with Oconee River water would carry weighty questions about sustainability - economic, environmental and otherwise - for that part of the state from Athens to Madison, Milledgeville, Dublin and beyond drained by the Oconee River.

The healthiest route for all of Georgia is for metro Atlanta to make a good-faith effort at pursuing water efficiency and conservation first as an abundant source of new water supply.

• Ben Emanuel is Oconee Projects coordinator with Altamaha Riverkeeper Inc. He is a former city editor for Athens' Flagpole magazine.
Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Thursday, December 10, 2009