In the words of Yogi Berra, it’s déjà vu all over again.
North Georgia is heading toward another serious drought. Lake Lanier and West Point Lake water levels are dropping, and already the Chattahoochee River has come close to the minimum flows needed to dilute the metro region’s treated sewage discharges.
Meanwhile, high-priced lawyers for Georgia, Alabama and Florida continue fighting in court to “win” the water in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river basin for their respective teams — while waiting for a federal appeals court to decide whether to affirm, modify, or overturn an order issued in 2009 by district court Judge Paul Magnuson.
That order, widely acknowledged to be a catalyst for solving regional water problems, sets a July 2012 deadline for the states to come to a water-sharing agreement. Some of those who have said the deadline was essential to get the region to deal with our ongoing water crisis now are hoping the deadline will vanish when the appeals court rules. They apparently want the region to return to business as usual.
We can only speculate about whether any progress has been made toward an agreement to share the water needed by communities from North Georgia to Florida, while ensuring a healthy river system. State leaders have claimed for two decades that negotiations are ongoing. But, the negotiations are officially secret, so there is no way for the public to know what, if anything, is happening.
At the same time, influential consultants and their wealthy landowner clients are pushing hugely expensive and environmentally damaging new reservoirs, distracting from the obvious and most cost-effective water supply solution in front of us — Lake Lanier.
We must abandon the costly, time-intensive water supply schemes being pushed by engineers, lawyers and lobbyists (that will garner them millions of dollars in fees) and instead focus on getting legal access to Lake Lanier for water supply for metro Atlanta. We have one year and one month to make it happen.
If that means making a deal and providing concessions to Alabama and Florida, then so be it. If that means using bond money appropriated during the past legislative session to invest in aggressive water conservation like other cities have done through leak repair, plumbing retrofits and conservation pricing, then why not? If that means spending a few million dollars to study raising the level of Lake Lanier to secure more water storage to support all users in the basin, then let’s do it!
Even if the July 2012 deadline is set aside by the appeals court, we must make a deal to get a fair and reasonable allocation of the water in Lanier and move forward in making metro Atlanta the most environmentally sustainable city in the country.
Sally Bethea is executive director of Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.
