I am sure you all from Georgia are happy to know that at least the Mussels have enough water for survival.
CUMMING, Ga. (AP) - With water supplies rapidly shrinking during a drought of historic proportions, Gov. Sonny Perdue declared a state of emergency Saturday for the northern third of Georgia and asked President Bush to declare it a major disaster area.
Georgia officials warn that Lake Lanier, a 38,000-acre reservoir that supplies more than 3 million residents with water, is less than three months from depletion. Smaller reservoirs are dropping even lower.
Perdue asked the president to exempt Georgia from complying with federal regulations that dictate the amount of water released from Georgia's reservoirs to protect federally protected mussel species downstream.
"We need to cut through the tangle of unnecessary bureaucracy to manage our resources prudently - so that in the long term, all species may have access to life-sustaining water," he said. On Friday, Perdue's office asked a federal judge to force the Army Corps of Engineers to curb the amount of water it drains from Georgia reservoirs into streams in Alabama and Florida. Georgia's environmental protection director is drafting proposals for more water restrictions. My Way News - Georgia Seeks Water Disaster Declaration
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Having grown up in Atlanta (moved up to NH in 2002), part of me feels sorry for N Georgia's current situation. However, Ga has known about this potential for DECADES now and has chosen to stick its head in the sand and build, build, build, well beyond what it's natural resources can supply. Atlanta, the biggest culprit, has been involved in major lawsuits involving its draining of the Chattahoochee river for years. For that I have little sympathy. I say let the mussels have their water
It's not just Georgia. Much of the Southeast, normally a temperate rainforest climate, has had a shortage of rainfall this year. While overbuilding, etc., my exacerbate the problem, no one could possibly have 'known for years' that this part of the country would be more than a foot low on rainfall for the year, as we are currently experiencing in Tennessee. Many towns/cities/counties in East Tennessee are currently experiencing conditions that could drain municipal water supplies in just a few months if more precipitation doesn't come our way. Personally, I'm hoping we have a real winter this year, like we used to have, and that a good bit of the much-needed precipitation comes as snow!
Oh, and as an interesting aside, I attended a wedding last weekend and, at the reception, sat at table with some folks from Texas. They were saying that this year their part of the country had the wettest, coolest summer they remember, at least since 1973, and that a drought that has lasted years where they are from officially ended this year.
Saw this on CNN this morning. Really sad isn't it? I am thinking that California will not be to far behind. We are going to be in real bad shape. They have already started asking for people to start to cut back. We all just really need some rain. And this year is supposed to be another drought.
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2002 Saleen S/C Coupe
#293 Torch Red
Power in the hands of a few
I'm in Atlanta, and my wife and I are making efforts to conserve. We went and got a low flow shower head yesterday. I don't water my lawn at all, and I haven't washed my car in 3 weeks!
Personally, I don't trust anything Sonny says, and I don't think Atlanta should be allowed to hog all the water, with no consideration of people (and mussels) downstream.
It's not just Georgia. Much of the Southeast, normally a temperate rainforest climate, has had a shortage of rainfall this year. While overbuilding, etc., my exacerbate the problem, no one could possibly have 'known for years' that this part of the country would be more than a foot low on rainfall for the year, as we are currently experiencing in Tennessee.
Georgia has experienced droughts on and off for as long as I can remember (Lived there from 1978-1986/ 1991-2002). these have increased every year as the city has expanded. Lake Lanier was built as a reservoir to help supply the area with water (plus other things like recreation) back in the late 40's/early50's. It was fine for the size of the area then, even for a bit of growth. However, the expansion of Atlanta has for years been sucking this dry, and the reservoir has been low for years. Florida and Alabama have been involved in lawsuits over Atlanta's overuse of the water supply for almost 20 years now. I think the City and surrounding area has been on summer water rationing for a bout 10 years. Having to rotate days when outdoor water usage (ie watering lawns and washing cars) was allowed. At least 10 years ago, I can remember talk about building a desalinizing plant near Savannah and a pipeline to Atlanta, because N georgia knew its water reserves were in danger. It was dismissed as being too expensive to attempt, and the city of Atlanta kept on expanding, knowing that it's water supplies couldn't handle it.
While the exact shortage of rainfall couldn't have been known, the approximate and general trend is fairly predictable. The city has been aware that the local lakes and reservoirs would not support the growth. Now the southeast in in a serious drought, and the reserves that should have lessened the burden and helped to sustain Atlanta and N Georgia, have been depleted from over expansion. The warning signs were there, they were just ignored by those who could have done something. [/rant]
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Many towns/cities/counties in East Tennessee are currently experiencing conditions that could drain municipal water supplies in just a few months if more precipitation doesn't come our way. Personally, I'm hoping we have a real winter this year, like we used to have, and that a good bit of the much-needed precipitation comes as snow!
Maybe my wife and I should head down there this fall. My parents are just outside of Lawrenceburg, TN, and the last time we were down there (Mid April) it rained every day we were there. It seems to rain anytime we visit. I think they haven't seen any real rain since then.
RSD
I am sure you all from Georgia are happy to know that at least the Mussels have enough water for survival.
CUMMING, Ga. (AP) - With water supplies rapidly shrinking during a drought of historic proportions, Gov. Sonny Perdue declared a state of emergency Saturday for the northern third of Georgia and asked President Bush to declare it a major disaster area.
Georgia officials warn that Lake Lanier, a 38,000-acre reservoir that supplies more than 3 million residents with water, is less than three months from depletion. Smaller reservoirs are dropping even lower.
Perdue asked the president to exempt Georgia from complying with federal regulations that dictate the amount of water released from Georgia's reservoirs to protect federally protected mussel species downstream.
"We need to cut through the tangle of unnecessary bureaucracy to manage our resources prudently - so that in the long term, all species may have access to life-sustaining water," he said. On Friday, Perdue's office asked a federal judge to force the Army Corps of Engineers to curb the amount of water it drains from Georgia reservoirs into streams in Alabama and Florida. Georgia's environmental protection director is drafting proposals for more water restrictions. My Way News - Georgia Seeks Water Disaster Declaration
The portion of the Southeast involved includes large areas of Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia. This is a regional problem, not some symptom of misuse of water by the City of Atlanta. The National Weather Service calls this drought an "exceptional event", which is bureaucrateese for "a damn rare and serious emergency".
Lake Sidney Lanier is the central issue. It is the primary reservoir serving Atlanta and 6 other metro area counties, but NOT the other 66 counties involved in the drought, and certainly not the other states suffering from water problems.
Lanier was originally created to serve as a water reservoir for these counties and the City of Atlanta. It was built on land owned by the taxpayers of Georgia, with the bulk of the cost paid for by the same taxpayers. Major financing for construction of the dam also came from public bonds repaid by Georgia taxpayers, and from Georgia Power, our local electric utility.
A tiny percentage of the cost was supplied by the Federal Government (about 4%).
In the end, the taxpayers of Georgia paid 96% of the cost and got 0% of the control.
The celebrated fresh water mussels down in Florida are rare only when one dissects them and determines whether it is one of the rare mussels, or just one of the biologically near-identical common mussels found everywhere else on the planet. The science in determing the scarcity of the mussels is questionable (with the difficulty in defining them, would it be easy to miss large populations of the same sub-species living elsewhere?). Also, how "natural" is the process of maintaining the river flow at full flood (I drive over the Chattahoochee each and every day, and it is bizarre to see the river overflowing its banks while the countryside is undergoing a strong drought)? If the river were not under the complete control of the Corps of Engineers, it would now be running at a very low level, and those mussels would have to just lump it.
Right now, the water release from Lanier is running around 1.4BILLION gallons per day - sufficient water to run the region's essential water requirements for months. The Chattahoochee river is NOT a natural waterway now - its just an incredibly wasteful and inefficient man-made aquarium benefiting a tiny population of unimportant clams at insane costs!
Doubtless there was a moderate middle-ground that COULD have been put into play before things got this bad. It strikes me that adjusting the river's levels to something like the natural conditions (its crazy to try to keep them flowing at some arbitrary constant) was the policy which should have been followed. Assuming the mussels didn't evolve overnight, they MUST have had periods of time in the past millenia when the river ran at a lower level due to drought!
Its raining right now - a nice shower, and we're supposed to have more of the same for the next 3 days. Maybe Mother Nature will bail us out of our own stupidity again. Neal Boortz (author of that NRST book I promote and a famous local Libertarian talk radio host) has seriously suggested that the Governor seize the Sidney Lanier Dam with the National Guard (it would take about a platoon at most) and turn off the water tap. By the time the Corps of Engineers and the federal Fish and Game people took their whining to the Supreme Court to initiate still another fight about States Rights, it might all be "water over the dam".
To everyone else out there, let this be a lesson to you, and no, I'm not just talking about making sure you have a huge, 38,000 acre reservoir with mega-billions of gallons of water capable of supplying you with water even through an extended drought (after all, this did Atlanta and North Georgia no good). No, what I'm talkign about is letting the Feds get their nasty camel's nose into your tent in the first place. Its really a Libertarian policy problem. Local infrastructure like this should be built by and for the locals.
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tripleblack
"You can never be free until you let yourself go."
Pitiful, surrounded by water and it's hard to come by. Bill Richardson is already saying that the Great Lakes water should be diverted south....Yeah, muck things up more.
I like the idea about the gov down there turning off the tap. If the mussels dry up, isn't that a "natural" occurence?
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Pitiful, surrounded by water and it's hard to come by. Bill Richardson is already saying that the Great Lakes water should be diverted south....Yeah, muck things up more.
I like the idea about the gov down there turning off the tap. If the mussels dry up, isn't that a "natural" occurence?
Natural? Absolutely.
But the eco-nuts (vs true environmentalists, who tend to have sane minds - an important distinction) can't seem to understand that its things like drouts (or too MUCH rain) that change the survival chances for species.
Had the Chattahoochee River been left au naturale, it would now be a small trickle and those mussels would either sink or swim depending on natural selection. By artificially keeping them well-supplied with water while nature was executing a drought, humans are not "conserving nature" - we are inserting a highly un-natural, artificial element into the mix.
Its 1984, and words are being inverted.
"Environmental conservation" now means "artificial intervention".
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tripleblack
"You can never be free until you let yourself go."
Maybe my wife and I should head down there this fall. My parents are just outside of Lawrenceburg, TN, and the last time we were down there (Mid April) it rained every day we were there. It seems to rain anytime we visit. I think they haven't seen any real rain since then.
RSD
Isn't Lawrenceburg in Middle Tennessee? If so, your parents are probably in a little better shape for rain than we are here in East Tennessee. It has gotten so bad here that many folks who raise cattle, etc. sold them off (many as young animals and at a very low price) two or three months ago because they couldn't afford to feed them. For some of them, their only hope to stay in the business long-term is that they can buy calves at a decent price at the first of the year to restock their herds. Some of them are meat herds but many of the cattle in this area are dairy cattle. These folks have been feeding hay since the spring because the grass hasn't been getting enough rain to grow. In fact, hay has gotten scarce enough around here that people are having to buy it out of state and ship it in. My brother in law's father went to a local horse auction about a month and a half ago and said that there were some pretty good horses going for $50. People were just trying to find homes for the horses because they weren't going to be able to feed them. A little off topic, but combine the grass/hay shortage with the fact that corn prices are going up due to more corn being 'diverted' into the production of ethanol then add in increased shipping costs due to higher fuel prices and it is pretty easy to do the math as to what is going to happen to milk and meat prices this winter.
The good news we have rain today!!! Pretty good, soaking rains, too. There is also a chance for more of the same, tomorrow. Not that we'll turn down more. If there is a chance you can bring rain with you, then come on down! Better yet, wait until colder weather and bring snow with you, instead.
It's my understanding that the water released downstream is not just for the mussels. There are people downstream depending on that water as well.
The natural flow of the Chattahoochee would not be disturbed. It just would not continue to be augmented by destroying the reservoir's reserves. Much of the natural water which flows in the Chattahoochee river bed is sourced from smaller rivers, springs, streams and drainage downstream of Lake Lanier.
The downstream users have not experienced ANY shortages (the river levels have been kept full long past where they matched the rate of inflow at Lake Lanier), and hopefully will be able to tap their own reservoirs for any short-fall.
Also, the other users are not taking ANY steps to reduce water useage. Part of the reason for this is the fact that they are confidant that the problem will be solved by Georgia taxpayers before they have to spend any of their own money. Neither state even has current laws on the books to address the problem! (This comment applies solely to Alabama and Florida, of course - Georgia communities involved in the crisis are already subject to water restrictions just like everyone else in the affected area of the state). Many small towns in south Georgia near the river have seperate, cleaner sources for drinking water, though many of them do use the river for the outflow of their water treatment facilities.
I'm not aware of ANY Georgia towns that rely utterly and directly on water from the Chattahoochee. If so, they are notably dumb (NO reservoir or lake water at all?), and can doubtless get assistance from the State government if need be (I've been reading in the news about small towns in Tennessee trucking in water to their holding tanks, mainly because they have NO reservoir and were counting on some river or spring for their water).
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tripleblack
"You can never be free until you let yourself go."
Georgia Seeks Water Disaster Declaration 
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