Years later, Georgia governor’s water program still far from goal

The program has underwritten a slew of state-financed loans to spur the construction of a range of lakes across North Georgia, but one county recently squelched a lake-building project that was awarded $21 million from the state. Two others have greatly benefited from the program, while several more remain lodged in various stages of planning and are years, if not decades, from completion.

And the experiments that Deal’s initiative funded in search of new ways to pump and store water have been largely hit-or-miss, including one controversial project that scientists abandoned and two others that remain in limbo.

The governor and his allies stand by the program as a way to help Georgia seize more control of its water supply amid the brutal 25-year fight with Alabama and Florida over water policy, a fight that entered a new phase a year ago when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider a fresh appeal contending that metro Atlanta was draining too much from Lake Lanier.

Judson Turner, the head of Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division, said the setbacks were expected and that progress, if sometimes halting, has been encouraging.

“This is a legacy program. It’s a game-changer for public policy,” said Turner, whom Deal also appointed the state’s water czar. “It says the state will participate in making these projects a reality.”

Yet environmentalists have never quieted their appeals for the state to instead focus on efforts they consider to be more proven, such as fixes to leaks that plague the water distribution network, rather than backing scientific gambits and costly reservoir projects.

“Our tax dollars should be spent on trying to make the infrastructure that delivers water to our homes more efficient,” said April Ingle, a conservationist who tracks Georgia’s water policy. “We shouldn’t spend all this money on building a new water supply reservoir, then to pipe it and treat it, then to put it into a system that is still losing 10 or 20 percent of its water.”

New projects, varying levels of success

Deal made creating the water supply program one of his first acts after he took office in January 2011, and he pushed state officials to use a $100 million account for direct investments — grants that didn’t need to be repaid — toward mostly smaller expenditures in search of new ways to tap water sources.

Environmental officials have so far tapped about a quarter of that account, and $12 million has funded four experiments with varying levels of success.

There was the $1.4 million “aquifer storage and recovery” project in Baker County that would have pulled water from one aquifer and then pumped it into another for storage. Long opposed by environmentalists who worried it could pollute the aquifer, state officials say it was canceled shortly after it began due to low productivity.

An additional $4.5 million was devoted to a program to buy and rehabilitate wells for the Lake Lanier Islands Resort that environmentalists criticized as an unnecessary extravagance. The project remains in limbo as scientists have yet to settle on a location to further explore.

The jury also remains out on a $6.2 million project to investigate whether the state can pump hot, salty water from an aquifer about three-quarters of a mile underground and design a new treatment system for it based on the water’s chemistry. Drilling on the Tybee Island project hasn’t begun yet.

The greatest — and what could be only — success was also the cheapest. A project that cost roughly $150,000 successfully paid for workers to drill into an underground aquifer to test whether it could be used to nourish crops at the University of Georgia’s Stripling Irrigation Research Park.

Turner, the environmental chief, said the state has gained valuable experience even from the halted projects.

“A farmer is not going to do this type of experimentation on their own dollar. And there’s going to be setbacks. But we’re learning,” Turner said. “We’re investing in strategic ways to prove new technologies and help optimize projects in a way that will work — instead of sitting on the sidelines.”

It’s that type of spending that irritates environmentalists. Chris Manganiello, the policy director of the Georgia River Network, pointed to $100 rebates in metro Atlanta that have helped replace about 100,000 toilets with more efficient models since 2008 — saving about 900 million gallons of water each year.

“We could do another 100,000 toilets for $10 million — and save another 900 million gallons a year,” he said. “And maybe do it faster.”

With much of the fund untapped, Georgia officials are exploring new projects — and planning to set aside some of the remaining funds in case another reservoir project comes through. Andrew Morris of the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority said he is keeping an eye on the Glades Reservoir, an estimated $130 million Hall County project that's beset by environmental and political concerns.

Reservoirs advance and regress

The brunt of the program’s funding has scattered to loans for a ring of new reservoirs. Counties and cities have secured more than $180 million of a $200 million account the state designated for loans, much of them in the wetter and more populous northern third of the state.

The loans have continued despite warnings from politicians and conservationists in neighboring states who see Georgia's plan as a blatant attempt to hoard more water.

“It’s a hugely expensive project,” said Dan Tonsmeire, a Florida environmentalist and the Apalachicola Riverkeeper. “There are other alternatives that are less expensive and more sustainable, more cost-effective and better for all the stakeholders in the basin.”

The biggest chunk of money has been steered to two sprawling regional reservoirs that received a coveted U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit that clears the way for construction.

The Richland Creek Reservoir, a 305-acre lake under construction in Paulding County, is slated to receive about $68 million in loans from the state, plus an additional $15.2 million in direct investment.

Voters initially approved the project in 1999, and Dallas Austin, the County Commission’s chairman, cast the work as an imperative. In an interview, he twice invoked a recent notice from Cobb County, which now supplies Paulding with water, that warned it may eventually have to cut off the spigots.

“We’ll be able to provide for our residents ourselves,” he said. “And that means if a judge rules that Atlanta is not granted the same amount of water, Paulding would not be affected.”

In northeast Georgia, work on Hard Labor Creek Reservoir, which took in about $32 million in state-backed loans, is well underway. Oconee County Commission Chairman Melvin Davis said the lake is vital to the growth of the region, even though its population growth has slowed.

“It puts us on a much greater footing in our future,” Davis said. “I’m a believer in regional partnerships. We went through a bad drought in the late 2000s, and to have the revenue to finance this on our own would be extremely difficult for a smaller county like ours.”

Elsewhere in Georgia, though, local lawmakers aren’t nearly as chipper about reservoir construction. The Newton County Commission voted unanimously in October to stop work that began 15 years ago on a proposed drinking water reservoir known as Bear Creek after federal regulators pulled the county’s application for a dam permit.

Commissioner John Douglas said the county couldn't overcome concerns from scientists and residents over whether the project was needed, even after the state awarded the reservoir a $21 million loan to help get it started.

Two other projects — one in south Fulton County and another in Carroll County — are in line to receive a combined $20 million if they can secure a federal construction permit.

State leaders brushed off the setback, saying it was a sign Georgia should focus its effort on regional efforts. Speaking generally, Deal also pointed to overblown predictions and wishful thinking from consultants who pushed ambitious projects.

“What we have seen is that some of the projections that consultants were putting out there initially in terms of the demand 20 and 30 years down the road, the numbers don’t back themselves now,” Deal said.

Environmentalists, though, saw it as a warning that could not be ignored.

“It’s a taste of things to come,” said Colleen Kiernan of the Sierra Club’s Georgia chapter. “And there are less expensive and less destructive paths to meet our water needs.”