Our Opinion: Progress has come only in drips

A year ago, Gov. Sonny Perdue and state leaders made water their top priority. Georgia’s first water management plan zipped through the House and Senate and landed on Perdue’s desk in under three weeks.

“We will conserve and use this precious and vital resource wisely,” Perdue told lawmakers in his 2008 State of the State address. “We will reuse it so we consume as little as we need.”

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Vino Wong/vwong@ajc.com

Recent rain added little to Lake Lanier, which is still more than 14 feet below full pool.

• View the draft water conservation management plan for Georgia at: www.georgiawcip.org. View the draft water plan for the Metropolitan North Georgia Planning District at: www.northgeorgiawater.com.

A year later, water has evaporated as a legislative priority, and some $40 million in grants for communities to invest in water infrastructure and management have disappeared, as well, due to budget cuts.

But the water crisis itself hasn’t receded much at all. Despite recent rain, Lake Lanier is down more than 14 feet. And in the long term, “we are approaching the sustainable limit of our small watershed,” two regional water experts recently declared on these pages.

In fact, no issue, including transportation, threatens Georgia’s economy more in the long term than the continued availability of water.

Statewide, a conservation plan now available in draft form offers dozens of concrete water-saving recommendations for seven sectors of the Georgia economy, from residences to golf courses, and farming to power generation. It is open for public comments until Jan. 31, and even when finalized it will only be a voluntary list of best practices. Its provisions won’t become mandatory unless Perdue and Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch develop and adopt the regulations to implement it.

In addition, the state must adequately fund scientific research of Georgia’s watersheds and water basins. Outside of metro Atlanta, we know little about the state of our watersheds, from how much water they hold to how quickly they replenish. It’s impossible to plan for the future without a precise grasp of what’s available.

Other necessary steps will require legislative action:

• Make large water users drawing less than 100,000 gallons per day obtain withdrawal permits from the EPD. Collectively, these entities draw enormous quantities of water, but the EPD can only guess how much because they aren’t subject to permitting.

• Make well-water users subject to watering restrictions just like people who take public water from their city or county. Many homes and businesses have dodged drought restrictions by digging wells, even though groundwater withdrawals also deplete water from the watershed.

• Change the plumbing code to require newer, low-flow toilets in new construction. Homes are now built with toilets that use about 1.6 gallons per flush. Newer toilets use even less, about 1.3 gallons per flush. Toilets are the largest water user inside the home.

• Require condominiums and apartment houses to have water meters for every unit, instead of a single master meter for the whole complex. Metering makes all users accountable for the water they use.

• Allow homeowners to xeriscape even if a subdivision’s restrictive covenants don’t allow it. Many homeowners want to plant lawns and gardens that use less water but can’t because homeowner associations often don’t allow non-native vegetation.

It’s also important that government send a consistent message. Perdue, for example, has urged Georgians to adopt a “culture of conservation,” which implies a long-term change of attitude. But that plea has been undercut by Perdue’s decision to relax watering restrictions, which suggests the problem is short-term.

Regions recover from droughts through years of conserving and years of better rains. Residents can’t start watering lawns or filling swimming pools after we’ve had a little rain.

At the metro district level, the region’s water planners must set more aggressive targets for conservation. The update of the district’s 2003 water plan, also open to public comment until Jan. 31, includes measures that would reduce water use 13 percent by 2035. That’s not enough, particularly for a region that already has high per-capita water use.

Since the district began promoting conservation in 2003, per-capita residential use has declined only 2 percent, from 91 to 89 gallons. Indoors, average use is now 69 gallons per person.

Nationwide, however, per-capita use of 45 gallons a day is regarded as a reasonable conservation goal, 35 percent lower than where we are today.

Clearly, the district must be far more aggressive. Part of the problem is that district officials, attempting to placate dozens of constituencies and members, have been reluctant to demand too much too quickly.

After several years of delays, nearly all metro water suppliers adopted water rates meant to penalize heavy users and thus encourage conservation. Now officials realize that many of those pricing structures didn’t raise rates high enough to have an effect on consumption.

Originally scheduled for 2004, the district also finally began to offer rebates for the purchase of low-flow toilets last year. About 15,000 older toilets, which use 5 to 7 gallons per flush, have been swapped for low-flow models. But with 425,000 older toilets in the metro district, it will take 28 years to replace them at a rate of 15,000 per year.

To its credit, DeKalb County has taken a leadership role within the district by requiring new homeowners to retrofit older toilets when they apply for new water service. It also provides a $50 to $100 rebate for the toilets, depending on the model. That’s an approach that other jurisdictions in the district should follow, and that the Legislature should implement statewide.

And lax as it has been on residential users, the metro district has been even more reluctant to impose conservation on businesses and industry. In fact, the lion’s share of the conservation burden has so far been placed on residential users. That, too, has to change.

The irony is that no one loses when residents and businesses use less water. Lake and stream levels rise. Lake Lanier residents get their shoreline back. Downstream users are protected. And Georgia can continue to accommodate new residents and businesses.

But it will take more than words to make it happen.

— Ken Foskett, for the editorial board