Gay Arnieri permanently plugged her bathtub, reusing the soapy, gray water to wash clothes, flush the toilet and take baths.

Developer Woody Snell added a state-of-the art irrigation system and super low-flow plumbing and appliances to his plans for a mixed-use community.

Louie Favorite / AJC (ENLARGE)

Woody Snell at site of his redevelopment of an older neighborhood in Marietta.

TODD R. MCQUEEN / Special (ENLARGE)

A simple pump and hose let Gay Arnieri store bathwater she uses to fill her washing machine.

Some boaters returning to Lanier | Photos MORE ON THE DROUGHT: • Map: Heavy demands on our water • Photos: April showers bring ... • Photos: Lake rises dramatically in January RELATED: State lifts strict outdoor watering restrictions  Ban lifted on new Lake Lanier boat docks  Drought's over and Lake Lanier gets lively  Water wars judge stays patient, with Atlanta's future in his hands  Judge: Lanier use should have been decided long ago  • More on coping with the drought

PepsiCo used weekends and holidays to overhaul its Atlanta Gatorade plant to cut water use by as much as 30 percent.

Across the region, in big ways and small, people have responded to the historic drought now entering its third year in the Southeast.

Some changes are short-term. Sprinklers will help rejuvenate brown lawns when the drought ends. Restaurants that now serve water only on request may again welcome diners with an icy glassful.

Some adjustments have been reactionary, like the General Assembly's sudden interest in moving Georgia's border one mile north to encompass the richly flowing Tennessee River.

Other changes could be longer lasting, perhaps marking the end of the region's cavalier attitude toward water.

After years of talking about it, some metro cities and counties are offering rebates to residential water customers who replace old, water-guzzling toilets. If every old home toilet in metro Atlanta were replaced, regional planners estimate, the change would save six million gallons of water a day — enough to fill the whale sharks' tank at the Georgia Aquarium.

At the height of the crisis in October, state officials estimated Lake Lanier had 80 days of stored water remaining if conditions persisted. For three million metro Atlantans who depend on the federal reservoir, that was the day water became precious.

Alice Champagne, the city of Roswell's water resources manager, calls this drought a tipping point.

"If you look at other states that have been dealing with [water limits] a lot longer, they have year-round education. It's a way of life," Champagne said. "I think this is just the beginning of us changing to that way of life. It could take 10 to 15 years."

But change won't come easy. Two months of near-normal rainfall have blurred memories of two years of drought.

As temperatures warm, water managers around north Georgia are getting calls from homeowners asking when they can water their lawns again without checking a clock.

But Lanier remains more than 13 feet below normal. With the water-intensive spring and summer months approaching, the lake is lower than it has been in April since 1957 when it was filling up after the construction of Buford Dam.

Even so, there are signs the crisis is easing.

Lake Allatoona, another federal reservoir that provides drinking water to about 800,000 metro Atlantans, has refilled. And the U.S. Climate Prediction Center has downgraded the Southeast's drought from "exceptional" to "extreme," with a three-month outlook of improvement.

It's enough to raise the call to water lawns again as a God-given right.

In debate on the Senate floor recently, state Sen. John Wiles, a Republican attorney from Marietta, told of a constituent who planted $2,500 worth of sod that died from lack of water.

"That's just not right. That's almost like the government taking my property without compensating me for it," Wiles said.

No longer down the drain

Arnieri, a grandmother and part-time nanny who lives in Atlanta's Lake Claire neighborhood, started making drastic changes in her water use last fall.

An avid gardener, she let her lawn and vegetable garden die last year. She's since installed a rain barrel to capture runoff from the roof's gutters and plans to use it this spring to water her gardenias, tomatoes and broccoli.

But for months, her biggest sacrifice was scooping her bath water into two buckets and carrying those to the basement to fill her washer. (She uses clean water to rinse.)

Recently, Arnieri upgraded her rudimentary system with a small electric pump and two garden hoses.

She recently demonstrated how it works, uncoiling the green hose from its hook at the top of the basement stairs and carrying it, with the pump, down the hall to her bathtub filled with about 5 inches of gray water.

"It just takes a tiny bit more thinking beforehand and a few more minutes," she said. "Anybody can do it."

Arnieri has noticed the difference on her water bills. In January 2007, she used nearly 150 gallons of water a day, about double the region's average for one person. Last January, even with a housemate, her water bill shows she'd cut back to less than 45 gallons of water a day. She paid $21.18, about one-quarter of the amount paid by the city of Atlanta's average homeowner.

"This year has just been a year of awareness for me," said Arnieri, a Sierra Club member who said Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," made her consider her impact on the environment.

"I can't imagine not worrying about water anymore," she said.

Conservation may become more important to many water customers as prices increase.

"Water rates are going up," said state Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch. She said higher prices are both a conservation tool and a way to pay for improving water supplies.

" '07 was eye-opener"

Snell, the developer, had been working on a deal to buy and raze a 52-acre subdivision near Town Center mall for more than a year when the worst of the drought hit.

"A year ago, if you'd told me we'd be worried about water here in Georgia, there's no way I would've thought that was the case," Snell said.

His mixed-use development will have a state-of-the-art irrigation system pulling water from 15 cisterns filled by rain running off rooftops and parking lots. It will measure soil moisture and distribute the water in drip lines instead of sprinklers.

Snell will require builders of the 1,600 condominiums and townhouses to install water-efficient appliances. The savings are expected to be as much as 80 million gallons a year, just about enough water to supply the city of Atlanta, most of south Fulton, and Sandy Springs for a day.

Snell sees his development as a demonstration project.

"If we keep doing things the same way, we are going to run out of water," Snell said. " '07 was an eye-opener for all of us."

At PepsiCo's Gatorade bottling plant in Atlanta, one of nine in the United States, company officials had been working on water savings for all of its plants since 2005, Chicago-based spokeswoman Jill Kinney wrote in an e-mail. But the drought, she said "caused us to step up our efforts in Atlanta."

City of Atlanta records show the plant is the top water consumer in its service area, using 20.1 million gallons in March. The company disputes the city's data.

Every week, a team of Atlanta employees meets to talk about water conservation, Kinney said. The plant expects to save 76 million gallons of water this year. One change is that instead of rinsing new bottles with water before filling, the company invested in waterless, ionized-air rinsing technology that blows the dust out.

A sprinkle of adaptation

The most noticeable change the drought could leave behind is on metro Atlanta's lush landscapes.

Esther Stokes, a landscape designer in Atlanta since 1985, said gardeners may learn to make concessions like planting fewer water-needy hydrangeas and more drought-tolerant azaleas.

But she said the bigger change coming could be in the way we water the plants we love.

Instead of sprinkling our lawns with treated and increasingly expensive drinkable water, Stokes said, homeowners will get smarter about using rain barrels and cisterns. Developers should build those systems in as a matter of course, she said.

"Anybody who is building a house now is nuts if they don't put in a cistern if they can possibly afford it."

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ARE YOU EFFICIENT?

Gallons of water used daily per household member

Winter Summer

Fewer than 65 Fewer than 80 Efficient

70 gallons 91 gallons Average

More than 70 More than 100 Overuse

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CONSERVATION PRICING

Metro Atlanta communities began charging water hogs more about five years ago. Here's how it works in the city of Atlanta:

• In Atlanta, the average family uses 8 cubic feet of water every month, or 5,984 gallons.

• Base charge = $7.26 ($3.63 for water; $3.63 for sewer)

• First 3 cubic feet of water = $20.43, or $6.81 per ccf

• The next 3 cubic feet of water = $31.53, or $10.51 per ccf

• The last 2 cubic feet of water = $24.18, or $12.09 per ccf

• Plus, a post-9/11 federally required security charge of $0.15 per ccf = $1.20

• Total bill = $84.60

• In 2003, the average family's water and sewer bill was $49.60 a month. There was no base charge, water cost $1.75 per ccf and sewer service cost $4.45 per ccf, no matter how much water was used.

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WATER WISDOM

How to calculate how much water you use in your house. Look at your water bill. Water use can be measured in cubic meters, cubic feet, gallons, or liters. If it's not gallons, here's how to convert:

cubic meters (M³) x 264

= gallons

cubic feet (CF or CCF) x 748

= gallons

liters x 0.264 = gallons

If your water bill doesn't break out average daily use, you'll need to divide the water use by the number of days in the billing cycle. Then, to get a per person number, you'll need to divide by the number of people living in your house.

Here's the worksheet:

Water use in gallons ___ ÷ days in billing cycle ___ = daily use.

Daily use ___ ÷ number of people in household = gallons of water used daily per person.

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For information on how to calculate and improve the efficiency of your washing machine, showers and faucents and toilets, see: www.northgeorgiawater.com/html/212.htm.

Source: Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District