Atlanta: Without Heavy Rain, City Could Run Out of Water in 90 to 121 days

[FangKC]

http://news.aol.com/story/ar/_a/18-mont ... 0000000001

18 Months of Blue Skies — and Counting

Severe Drought in Southeast Forces Officials to Make Tough Choices

By BRENDA GOODMAN,The New York Times
Posted: 2007-10-16

ATLANTA (Oct. 15) - For the first time in more than 100 years, much of the Southeast has reached the most severe category of drought, climatologists said Monday, creating an emergency so serious that some cities are just months away from running out of water.

In North Carolina, Gov. Michael F. Easley asked residents Monday to stop using water for any purpose"not essential to public health and safety." He warned that he would soon have to declare a state of emergency if voluntary efforts fell short.

"Now I don’t want to have to use these powers," Mr. Easley told a meeting of mayors and other city officials." As leaders of your communities, you know what works best at the local level. I am asking for your help."

Officials in the central North Carolina town of Siler City estimate that without rain, they are 80 days from draining the Lower Rocky River Reservoir, which supplies water for the town’s 8,200 people.

In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days.

The hard numbers have shocked the Southeast into action, even as many people wonder why things seem to have gotten so bad so quickly.

Last week, Mayor Charles L. Turner of Siler City declared a water shortage emergency and ordered each"household, business and industry" to reduce water use by 50 percent. Penalties for not complying range from stiff fines to the termination of water service.

"It’s really alarming," said Janice Terry, co-owner of the Best Foods cafeteria in Siler City. To curtail water use, Best Foods has swapped its dishes for paper plates and foam cups.

Most controversially, it has stopped offering tap water to customers, making them buy 69-cent bottles of water instead."We’ve had people walk out," Ms. Terry said."They get mad when they can’t get a free glass of water."

For the better part of 18 months, cloudless blue skies and high temperatures have shriveled crops and bronzed lawns from North Carolina to Alabama, quietly creating what David E. Stooksbury, the state climatologist of Georgia, has dubbed"the Rodney Dangerfield of natural disasters," a reference to that comedian’s repeated lament that he got"no respect."

"People pay attention to hurricanes," Mr. Stooksbury said."They pay attention to tornadoes and earthquakes. But a drought will sneak up on you."

The situation has gotten so bad that by all of Mr. Stooksbury’s measures — the percentage of moisture in the soil, the flow rate of rivers, inches of rain — this drought has broken every record in Georgia’s history.

Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta, at a news conference last week, begged people in her city to conserve water."Please, please, please do not use water unnecessarily," Ms. Franklin said. "This is not a test."

Others wondered why the calls to conserve came so late.

"I think there’s been an ostrich-head-in-the-sand syndrome that has been growing," said Mark Crisp, an Atlanta-based consultant with the engineering firm C. H. Guernsey."Because we seem to have been very, very slow in our actions to deal with an impending crisis."

Mr. Crisp is among a chorus of experts who have warned for years that Atlanta is asking too much of Lake Lanier, a situation quickly being compounded by an absence of rain.

Many had hoped that hurricane season, as it has in the past, would bring several soaking storms to the Southeast to replenish reservoirs that are at or near all-time lows. But the longed-for rains never materialized, and now in October, traditionally the driest month, significant rainfall remains out of the picture.

"We’re in a stressful situation now," Mr. Crisp said,"but come next spring, if we don’t have substantial rainfall this winter, these reservoirs are not going to refill."

That would leave metro Atlanta dry in the summer, which traditionally has the highest water use of the year.

Others pointed to the Southeast’s inexperience with drought and to explosive growth in population as complicating factors.

"In the West, people expect that it’s dry, and you’re going to have drought situations," said Michael J. Hayes, director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln."In the Southeast, people think of it as being wet, and I think that mindset makes it tougher to identify worst-case scenarios and plan to that level."

"Here’s the fly in the ointment," Mr. Hayes added."The vulnerability in the Southeast has changed. Population shifts, increased competition and demand for water has increased, so that’s made this drought worse than it might have been."

Within two weeks, Carol Couch, director of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, is expected to send Gov. Sonny Perdue recommendations on tightening water restrictions, which may include mandatory cutbacks on commercial and industrial users.

If that happens, experts at the National Drought Mitigation Center said, it would be the first time a major metropolitan area in the United States had been forced to take such drastic action to save its water supply.

"The situation is very dire," Mr. Hayes said.

[dangerboy]

The hard numbers have shocked the Southeast into action, even as many people wonder why things seem to have gotten so bad so quickly.

I've seen several national new sources state that the reservoir was designed for a city of 1 million but is currently serving 4 million.  Sounds like the city hasn't increased its water supply at the same rate it has approved new subdivisions.

[staubio]

To curtail water use, Best Foods has swapped its dishes for paper plates and foam cups.

...and look, they are replacing one unsustainable behavior with another.

Here is to mindless growth!

[ComandanteCero]

The most annoying this is that there are several cities in the southwest that are going to be facing this exact problem in a couple of years, and it won't be because of a drought as much as the amount of water that is available in the region.

And yet we all know that when Phoenix, Las Vegas, L.A all get to the point where they're actually facing water shortages, they'll end up engineering something massive and environmentally harmful instead of looking at ways to conserve and reduce their foot print.

It's basically New Orleans on a massive regional scale, with cities growing in areas that are by definition precarious.  But no one will do anything about it till it becomes an emergency (and then we get all the CNN converage and politicians talking about it as if it just happened one day to the next).

[FangKC]

Not to mention the fact that the Colorado River dries up about the time it hits the Mexican border.

Phoenix has faced this problem before with the Hohokam civilization.  A large population existed in that valley and built an extensive canal system.  Then they abandoned the area due to problems with water and sustainability.

Lake Powell already has been drawn down incredibly low in the past couple of years.

[Gladstoner]

At least we don't have to worry about running out of water here.

[BVC]

This is being blown out of proportion a bit but there is a real danger in the long term.  The major problem is that some douchebag circuit court has deemed Alabama has water rights to the Chattahoochee River, the same that Lake Lanier is a reservoir.  If Georgia wasn't also supplying Alabama, the problem would be less of an issue.  The southwest US is in real danger as the southeast US usually gets more than ample rain supply to keep lawns wet and people showered.

There is major talk of desalinization plants being built on the coasts with water piped to Atlanta.  If that sounds crazy or undoable, keep in mind that gas is piped in the same manner.  Also, additional reservoirs are being considered.

[DanCa]

Ironically, here in dry Denver we've have a wet year and the reservoirs are full, last I heard.  The last few years were drought conditions here, so everyone conserved water to the point where the water company wasn't making enough money, so now our rates have gone way up - for using less water.  Go figure.

[FangKC]

New York City pipes in water hundreds of miles from the Adirondacks.  The tubes are so large that you could drive a big dumptruck through them.  There are actually three of them.

[anniewarbucks]

And yet there are millions of gallons of water in the oceans that can be used if the salt was removed from the water. We saw comercials Touting desalination plants back in the 1980's as a way to bring clean water to those that are in drought situations but weare falling short on getting this accomplished for the coastal states. The engineers that drempt up this idea should be following through with it for situations like this. Also the water pipes that supply the US should be all tied together so that comunities that have an excess of water can punp it to those that are deficient. We already do it with electricity with the US divided into zones we can do it with water.

[FangKC]

Or thousands of people could stop moving into the deserts.

[moderne]

I though most of NYC's water came from the Catskills?

[Steve52]

Were going to spend this century fixing the problems we created in the previous one.

[bbqboy]

.

And yet we all know that when Phoenix, Las Vegas, L.A all get to the point where they're actually facing water shortages, they'll end up engineering something massive and environmentally harmful instead of looking at ways to conserve and reduce their foot print.

[Highlander]

Or thousands of people could stop moving into the deserts.

That is a phenomena unique to the US.

[BVC]

That is a phenomena unique to the US.

...said the Middle East.

[FangKC]

I though most of NYC's water came from the Catskills?

You are correct Moderne. I always think of the Catskills as part of the Adirondacks, when it's actually part of the Appalachians. 

[KC0KEK]

Don't desalinization plants require huge amounts of power?

[DaveKCMO]

this was mentioned on morning edition today. it might go to federal court since other states are clamoring for the same water sources.

[DanCa]

Does the amount of water on the planet always remain the same (just redistributed differently based on weather patterns) or are we losing water?  Sorry, I didn't pay attention in meteorology class that day.