Atlanta Water Situation Called Dire

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Ivan Seeking
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Metro Atlanta could run out of drinking water in as little as four months according to dire predictions from top water officials on Thursday. [continued]
http://www.11alive.com/news/article_news.aspx?storyid=104561

This story has been growing in signficance for some time, and it sounds like things are getting very serious.
 
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The most severe thing they're doing to people watering their lawns is raising the rates for usage? No wonder they're in such a dire situation! :rolleyes: In much less severe droughts than that, I've lived places where they point blank prohibit the use of water for watering lawns or washing cars, and anyone caught doing so faces STEEP fines (and don't think your neighbors wouldn't rat you out if you were the only house on the block with a green lawn and clean cars in front of it).
 
How stupid. Why haven't they started water rationing? Banning watering lawns. People are so wasteful it disgusts me. I see people all of the time turning the faucet on to brush teeth, wash hands, or general cleaning and they have the faucet going full blast while they are walking around doing other things.

When you brush your teeth, wet the toothbrush and turn the water off, then turn it on just to rinse your brush and your mouth. With just some common sense millions of gallons of water could be saved every day.
 
Evo said:
When you brush your teeth, wet the toothbrush and turn the water off, then turn it on just to rinse your brush and your mouth. With just some common sense millions of gallons of water could be saved every day.

There are tons of ways to save water. When I was a kid and we went through that drought where they prohibited watering lawns, my parents enforced a number of household changes to save water. One of them was to limit time for showers. They started out setting a 5 min timer per person, then we got better at learning to turn on the shower, get wet, turn off the shower, lather up soap and shampoo, turn the water on to quickly rinse off, then off and get out. It gave us a little more time for lathering up since we didn't have the water running the whole time.
 
Evo said:
How stupid. Why haven't they started water rationing? Banning watering lawns. People are so wasteful it disgusts me. I see people all of the time turning the faucet on to brush teeth, wash hands, or general cleaning and they have the faucet going full blast while they are walking around doing other things.

When you brush your teeth, wet the toothbrush and turn the water off, then turn it on just to rinse your brush and your mouth. With just some common sense millions of gallons of water could be saved every day.

The problem is really the drought.

"If there is no rain, no brown water coming in, we have four months of storage in the entire system to provide the water supply for one-third of the residents of the state of Georgia," said Atlanta Watershed Commissioner Rob Hunter.

People brushing their teeth with a teaspoon of water might make the supply last another month but why bother when:

It's been an extreme year of drought, and some have said the federal agency that manages the lake has continued with business as usual. The US Army Corps of Engineers releases millions of gallons of water a day from Lake Lanier.

Some of that water stays in Metro Atlanta, but some travels further downstream to Florida and Alabama.

"One of the individuals in Florida said, 'Well, we have a $3 million a year oyster season'," said Jackie Joseph of the Lake Lanier Association. "We have a $5.5 billion economy around this lake."...

...In his letter, Deal questioned why water was still being released from Lake Lanier to help endangered mussels in Florida. The Corps of Engineers said that is required by an endangered species act, and there is not much they can do about that.
 
zoobyshoe said:
The problem is really the drought.

And growth.

I believe that Vegas has banned lawns for Casinos and is generally promoting the use of indigineous plants that require far less water than does grass. The growth around Vegas requires that habbits change drastically. Southern Cal could face the same problem, and in fact N and S Cal have fought over the Feather River and other sources for a century.
 
If its brown flush it down, if its yellow its mellow.


Also people should only wet themselves in the shower. Turn off the water, lather up, and then rinse off instead of leaving the water on the entire time during the shower.


people are inherently apathetic so people don't care about water usage until there is a sever e shortage.
 
Ivan Seeking said:
And growth.

Southern Cal could face the same problem, and in fact N and S Cal have fought over the Feather River and other sources for a century.

You and I should start up a desalinization business on the Salton Sea. Land is very cheap there. We could dissociate the water with radio waves generated by the desert sun, burn it back to pure H2O, then sell it to San Diego.
 
zoobyshoe said:
You and I should start up a desalinization business on the Salton Sea. Land is very cheap there. We could dissociate the water with radio waves generated by the desert sun, burn it back to pure H2O, then sell it to San Diego.

:biggrin: I'm already up to my knees in algae... well, I will be once I start the next batch.
 
Moonbear said:
The most severe thing they're doing to people watering their lawns is raising the rates for usage? No wonder they're in such a dire situation! :rolleyes: In much less severe droughts than that, I've lived places where they point blank prohibit the use of water for watering lawns or washing cars, and anyone caught doing so faces STEEP fines (and don't think your neighbors wouldn't rat you out if you were the only house on the block with a green lawn and clean cars in front of it).

If they stopped watering their lawns, they'd be violating neighborhood covenants, wouldn't they? In some neighborhoods, your neighbors would be more likely to rat you out for being the only house on the block with a brown lawn in the middle of a drought. We run into the same problems in Colorado Springs and that same argument (limits on watering lawns, etc vs raising rates) comes up every time.
 
BobG said:
If they stopped watering their lawns, they'd be violating neighborhood covenants, wouldn't they? In some neighborhoods, your neighbors would be more likely to rat you out for being the only house on the block with a brown lawn in the middle of a drought. We run into the same problems in Colorado Springs and that same argument (limits on watering lawns, etc vs raising rates) comes up every time.

I don't think the covenant can be enforceable if it violates city law. And if everyone is in the same situation, they should be more understanding. The whole idea of putting a green lawn ahead of drinking water is idiotic. Besides, it would serve all those people right for letting their HOAs dictate how they maintain their private property rather than just governing how common areas are maintained (i.e., roads, community parks).
 
San Diego has a weekly free magazine called The Reader and this week the cover story was titled A Perfect Drought (as in: The Perfect Storm).

Apparently the whole area around San Diego is suffering from an extended and severe drought that is well on its way to making it all into a bone dry desert. The climate used to be very good for oak trees which flourished, but now all the oak are dying from lack of water . These oaks have been doing really well around here for at least 300 years, but no longer. The water tables have sunk to depths that are way below what the trees can reach.

None of this is apparent in the city itself which not dependent on local water but gets it from Northern California and the Colorado River.
 
drought, global warming, bird flu, mrsa, or republicans?


Which one is going to bring the downfall to humanity first?
 
rewebster said:
drought, global warming, bird flu, mrsa, or republicans?


Which one is going to bring the downfall to humanity first?

What's "mrsa"?
 
rewebster said:
drought, global warming, bird flu, mrsa, or republicans?


Which one is going to bring the downfall to humanity first?
I hadn't heard of that mrsa before.

Personally, I'm now thinking about all those lost-in-the-wilderness ways to distill water with a tin can and garbage bag.
 
mgb_phys said:
We would be willing to sell you some from here in Vancouver - buyer collects!
Not sure we want paying in your dollars though :-)
That's mighty neighborly of ya, but if we want your water we'll decide you're building weapons of mass destruction and invade.
 
zoobyshoe said:
That's mighty neighborly of ya, but if we want your water we'll decide you're building weapons of mass destruction and invade.
Feel free to 'democratize' Alberta - they have oil :-p
 
mgb_phys said:
Feel free to 'democratize' Alberta - they have oil :-p

I'll make a note of it and inform the President at the next meeting: "covert weapons of mass destruction programs uncovered in Alberta and Vancouver."
 
zoobyshoe said:
San Diego has a weekly free magazine called The Reader and this week the cover story was titled A Perfect Drought (as in: The Perfect Storm).

Apparently the whole area around San Diego is suffering from an extended and severe drought that is well on its way to making it all into a bone dry desert. The climate used to be very good for oak trees which flourished, but now all the oak are dying from lack of water . These oaks have been doing really well around here for at least 300 years, but no longer. The water tables have sunk to depths that are way below what the trees can reach.

None of this is apparent in the city itself which not dependent on local water but gets it from Northern California and the Colorado River.

This drought has now spawned a huge wildfire:

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gP9q6y-GSLbVY-8937Jc-woXk5qg

The eastern sky outside is visibly smudged and dirty looking to the east where the fires are, while the western sky over the ocean is still normally clear and blue. These fires have been going on a couple days now, at least, but today is the first I can smell smoke everywhere.
 
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...The severe drought tightening like a vise across the Southeast has threatened the water supply of cities large and small, sending politicians scrambling for solutions. But Orme, about 40 miles west of Chattanooga and 150 miles northwest of Atlanta, is a town where the worst-case scenario has already come to pass: The water has run out.

...Three days a week, the volunteer fire chief hops in a 1961 fire truck at 5:30 a.m. — before the school bus blocks the narrow road — and drives a few miles to an Alabama fire hydrant. He meets with another truck from nearby New Hope, Ala. The two drivers make about a dozen runs back and forth, hauling about 20,000 gallons of water from the hydrant to Orme's tank. [continued]
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21582319/?gt1=10547
 
Atlanta won't be able to truck water in.

They're now negotiating to stop letting half the water go downstream for the wildlife:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21584661/

If the drinking water runs out for such a large city I can't see anything happening but that the people will have to relocate and it will become a ghost city. I don't think anything like that's ever happened in the US.
 
I'm sorry, can you say assinine? The only water sanctions I can find are some outdoor watering bans recently put into place, but with exceptions for commercial use. :confused:

Poor government, bad decisions, more bad government, more bad decisions...
But even if an agreement is reached soon, the mayor said her city, which has doubled in population since 1980, needs to do a better job of conserving water.
Gee, you think?

Franklin also admitted that the Atlanta area did little to add to storage facilities during years of recent explosive growth, but says the city has now purchased a stone quarry to be developed into a new reservoir.

Atlanta is spending $4 billion to fix the city's water infrastructure. According to Franklin, 14 percent of the city's pipes, many of which date back to the 1890s, leak. Though the mayor says the percentage of leaky pipes has dropped each of the last six years.

But the remaining repairs will take four to five years and won't address the current crisis. Atlanta may soon have to resort to drastic action like some other Southeastern towns have already taken.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/10/18/pip.atlantadrought/index.html
 
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Evo said:
Poor government, bad decisions, more bad government, more bad decisions...

Yeah, everyone complains about the weather but no one ever does anything about it!
 
zoobyshoe said:
Yeah, everyone complains about the weather but no one ever does anything about it!

Sure, the weather is a big part of the problem, but they've seen this coming for a long time now and have only started putting in the most minimal of conservation restrictions this past month or so. The restrictions they have in place now are the ones that should have been in place back when those first reports came out...when, last year?...of the lake levels dropping so low that the docks were all on dry land. That would have bought more time before reaching crisis levels. Now that they're at crisis levels, restricting watering of lawns and having lots of exceptions for commercial businesses (i.e., if you have a landscaper water your lawn, it seems it's okay, since that's commercial) is too little too late. They should be limited to essential use only now...just enough for drinking/cooking, basic hygiene needs (short showers, dishwashing, brushing teeth), and firefighting. No filling pools, no watering lawns, no washing cars, no running public fountains unless it's entirely recycled water, no usage above your daily household limit, no exceptions.
 
News Flash:

Town of Marana Arizona sues town of Tucson because its not getting its fair share of the effluent from the regional sewage treatment plant!
Needless to say in neither of those towns do you see green lawns.