Metro Atlanta normally receives an estimated 50 inches of rain annually. In 2007, less than 25 inches has fallen.
Lake Lanier is 13 feet below full. Without more rain, it could drop to 31 feet below full by the end of the year —- a historic low. On the peak day in 2007, metro Atlanta used 583 million gallons of water from Lake Lanier and the upper Chattahoochee River. Lake Lanier, metro Atlanta's main source of water, has about three months of storage left, according to state and federal officials.
That's three months before there's not enough water for more than 3 million metro Atlantans to take showers, flush their toilets and cook. Three months before there's not enough water in parts of the Chattahoochee River for power plants to generate electricity. Three months before part of the river runs dry.
Three months is the best guess by hydrologists with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Georgia Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch as the record-breaking drought parches much of the Southeast.
"We've never experienced this situation before," Couch said.
In two weeks, Couch plans to give Gov. Sonny Perdue a list of options to further restrict water use by businesses and industries, along with an analysis of potential water savings and estimated job losses. Some exemptions to the state's ban on outdoor watering in North Georgia could end, including those applied to water-dependent businesses such as car washes, pressure washing companies and landscapers. Couch's staff is still working on the details.
She said she fully expects an economic hit if substantial rain doesn't fall soon and the emergency actions are taken. "There has to be a balance between determining how much water we can conserve against how much lost jobs and lost economy there is," Couch said. "You don't do that lightly."
snip...............................
How bad things could get depends on rain, and the forecast is not promising. October is typically the year's driest month, and climatologists say another dry, warm winter is ahead.
Metro Atlanta's water fate also depends largely on the Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that owns and operates Buford Dam and the 38,000-acre lake that sits behind it, bordered by Gwinnett, Hall and Forysth counties. This month, the Corps has released from Lanier more than four times as much water as flows in from the Chattahoochee and other feeder streams. But that's far less than last month, when the Corps released 35 times as much water out of Lanier than flowed in.
More than a billion gallons leave the lake every day, more than twice the amount metro Atlanta uses. Much of it flows past the city into West Point Lake, another federal reservoir near LaGrange, then along the Alabama border and eventually to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.
snip...............................
http://www.ajc.com/search/content/metro/stories/2007/10/11/wateruse1011.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
