Atlanta's near-death experience of losing Lake Lanier as a water source may have ended last summer, but the threat is not over for nearly 5 million area residents who rely on the lake and its releases into the Chattahoochee River for their existence.
City and county utilities are still navigating a murky future, rife with possible litigation that stifles plans for growth and may affect what each household pays for water.
Amid this uncertainty, the state's fastest-growing county finds itself in need of a new water contract. What it pays and how it negotiates could set the stage for other cities or counties who don't have access to a lake or stream.
Forsyth County's 25-year water contract with the city of Cumming ends in May, and some county officials worry the city may have it over a barrel.
It has nowhere else to go. And it's not alone. Other cities or counties without their own pipe into a lake or stream must often negotiate rates with exclusive suppliers.
All past efforts by Forsyth to gain access to Lake Lanier or the Chattahoochee River downstream have failed, and that's not likely to change while the state's water future remains in doubt.
Metro Atlanta faced a virtual shutdown in 2009 when U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson ruled that it had no claim to Lanier as a water source. He gave the state three years to go to Congress or reach agreement with Alabama and Florida over stream flows from the federal reservoir or else he would turn off the tap, leaving 3.5 million metro residents and almost all of Forsyth and Gwinnett counties without a source of water.
But Magnuson's decision was overturned in June when a three-judge panel from the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that metro Atlanta had rights to the reservoir water. That ruling was upheld in September by the full 11th Circuit.
Even so, access to water remains static in the area.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has not yet determined how much water metro Atlanta is entitled to.
Right now, it allows only four jurisdictions to tap into the reservoir -- the cities of Buford, Cumming and Gainesville, and Gwinnett County. The corps will not consider adding to that list until a new operating manual is completed in June, spokeswoman Lisa Coghlan said.
The state Environmental Protection Division, which permits lake and stream water withdrawals, is a little less rigid. The EPD has issued one permit for additional withdrawals since September, that to the city of Roswell for an additional 1.6 million gallons a day from Big Creek, a tributary of the Chattahoochee.
Add to this, Alabama and Florida have vowed to continue their 20-year fight with Georgia over stream flows. Both have until Monday to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn last year's appellate court decision.
Also right now, a federal judge is weighing whether to dismiss a case filed by Alabama over municipal water rights to Lake Allatoona. The case has many similarities with the Lanier battle and affects the source for almost half the water to the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority, which serves 800,000 customers.
Other water fights are of a more local nature.
Sandy Springs is in federal court fighting a rate differential it receives from the city of Atlanta, its exclusive supplier. Sandy Springs residents have long decried that they pay about 21 percent more per gallon for their water than Atlanta residents. Mayor Eva Galambos says residents are tired of having their water money pay for Atlanta's sewer system.
Many of the region's municipalities depend on their fellow cities and counties for drinking water.
Fulton County, for example, provides residential service to Alpharetta, Milton and Johns Creek, and it is negotiating a formal agreement with Roswell to supplement that city's supply.
Cumming has been in the water business since before Forsyth County got thirsty. Back in the 1940s, the city was permitted to draw from Dobbs and Bald Ridge creeks.
Longtime Mayor Henry Ford Gravitt turned the city's attention to Lanier in the late 1970s and secured a withdrawal contract for up to 8 million gallons of water a day. Today, the city has permits to pump up to 34 million gallons a day of lake water for itself and the county.
It has two separate water agreements with the county, one for raw water and another for treated water.
Forsyth paid Cumming about $4 million last year for treated water and about $269,000 for raw water that it processes at its own plant, said Tim Perkins, Forsyth's director of water and sewer.
Forsyth currently pays Cumming about $2.43 per 1,000 gallons for treated water and 10 cents per 1,000 gallons for raw water.
It costs the county about 52 cents to treat each 1,000 gallons of raw water at its processing plant, meaning it can supply its own finished product for about $1.90 less than it currently pays the city.
Perkins said that does not take into account a lot of the infrastructure, maintenance and labor associated with operating a water distribution system, costs that would have to be factored into any wholesale cost for treated water.
"We're not saying the city's wholesale price is unfair because we don't know what impacts we have on their system," Perkins said. "All we do know is we can treat the water ourselves for less cost."
The gap between cost and charge is something that concerns Forsyth County Commission Chairman Jim Boff, one of two county commissioners selected to negotiate the new water contract. Boff said he thinks Cumming knows its strengths.
"What I think the city will say is ‘What's the value of the water? What's the value of not building your own reservoir? What's the value of not waiting several years for an EPD permit?" he said.
Cumming's mayor objects to that analysis.
The city's water system includes a good portion of unincorporated residents, he said, so there is no impetus to take advantage of the county.
"We're working not just for residents of Cumming, here, but we also serve an area about one-third the size of Forsyth County," Gravitt said, adding that every penny collected for water is put back into the system it takes to produce and deliver it.
County Commissioner Patrick Bell, who will accompany Boff in the negotiations with Cumming, said he wishes the talks had started before the county was backed into a corner. During a recent work session, he accused some commissioners of playing games by failing to appoint an official negotiating team.
"This notion of delaying it and fiddling around," he said, "we just haven't got time for that."
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