Posted on 12/16/2007 3:31:08 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
No one has ever been fishing in the West Georgia Regional Reservoir that officials first planned in the 1980s to help quench the region's thirst.
That's because despite millions of dollars set aside by three Georgia governors, the state never built the reservoir. It never inundated thousands of acres of woods and pastures along the now drought-stricken Tallapoosa River in Haralson County, just a few miles from the Alabama line.
Nor did the state build the rest of the network of at least a dozen regional reservoirs that were supposed to drought-proof North Georgia. Nor did officials erect a proposed dam on the Chattahoochee River six miles downstream of Lake Lanier to pool more drinking water for metro Atlanta. Nor did they win approval to lock in dibs for more drinking water from Lanier.
Despite ample warnings and dire predictions over the last four decades, metro Atlanta has continued to grow even as it repeatedly failed to guarantee it would have enough water to satisfy its long term needs.
Every drought —- including the current one —- reminds officials how risky the area's water future is.
Abandoned by wavering political attention, shortchanged on money, hamstrung by environmental concerns and stymied by focus on a tri-state water war, potential solutions have died or gone uncompleted.
Even if officials started the process of creating new drinking water resources today, it could take years to get done. Planning for and getting the permit to build a reservoir can take a decade and a half. Some communities have launched water projects on their own or with nearby neighbors, but the results often have been piecemeal.
Bob Kerr, a key water negotiator for Georgia from about 1998 to 2004, said more could have been done by state officials and others.
Someone "has to say, 'We are going to make this a priority.' I don't think that happened," Kerr said. "They didn't say it was a priority, and they didn't put enough money into it."
Tony Ellis sees an underlying reason. He worked on the West Georgia reservoir when he was Haralson's sole county commissioner in the late 1980s. A drought had sparked interest in the project. As the drought faded, so did political will needed to push through the costly and complex project, he said.
"It just started raining," Ellis said. "The urgency went away."
critics claimed he didn't do enough on air pollution and water issues. He did not return calls seeking comment for this story.
His gubernatorial successor, Roy Barnes, said his own administration had a "good plan" for water, including pushing for reservoir construction, increasing conservation and boosting state and regional planning. Voters booted Barnes just before the 2003 legislative season that he had pre-dubbed the "Year of Water." Barnes contends that once he lost office, his water strategy was discarded "until we had a crisis."
"I think there is enough lack of leadership to go around for everyone," Barnes said, but he added, "I think the lack of leadership became more critical in the last few years."
Bert Brantley, a spokesman for the man who replaced Barnes, Gov. Sonny Perdue, said, "The governor has squarely recognized how important water is."
Perdue took office as Georgia emerged from a drought. His first budget proposal did not include funding for metro Atlanta water planning.
The state also eliminated its position of regional reservoir coordinator and backed out of a commitment to put a state park in Dahlonega that could have allowed expansion of a proposed reservoir.
Meanwhile, legislators raided funding that had been set aside to build the West Georgia reservoir, after voters ousted one of the project's biggest champions, state House Speaker Tom Murphy.
Brantley said Perdue took office amid a budget shortfall that required financial cuts and prevented new spending for the first two years of his administration.
"It was the only decision possible," Brantley said. Funding for metro Atlanta water planning was added in later budgets.
Metro Atlanta has had a lot of time to get right with water. In 1969, engineers concluded in a regional planning document that without dramatic action water would be in critically short supply by the time the area reached between 3 million and 5 million people —- metro Atlanta's population today.
It isn't as though Georgia never planned beyond a rainy day, said Wayne Hill, a former chairman of the Gwinnett County Commission.
"Implementation," he said, "hasn't been worth a flip."
Sally Bethea, head of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy group, said she sees two reasons metro Atlanta is behind on water.
First, "the stunning lack" of data about water use in Georgia, although the state has spent millions of dollars on studies, she said.
The state acknowledges its planners aren't sure of some basic facts, such as what impact metro Atlanta's future water withdrawals will have downstream in Georgia.
Second, Bethea said, "decades of denial by state and local officials that there is a limit to the number of people that the Chattahoochee River and other small North Georgia rivers can sustain."
The lost decades
Starting in the early 1970s, metro Atlanta's primary push for more water involved building a dam on the Chattahoochee River near Suwanee, about six miles below Lanier.
The idea was for the dam to pool the great rushes of water that were released from Lanier for hydropower. The flows would be slowed so local water suppliers could slurp up more.
After 16 years of studies and fights, federal and state officials concluded it was too costly, thanks to inflation, increased land prices and the risk of lawsuits. Environmentalists declared victory after years of warning that the project would cost too much and destroy a scenic stretch of the river known for trout fishing.
Two other ideas took the dam's place: setting aside a bigger share of Lanier's water for public supplies, which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said required congressional approval, and building a series of regional reservoirs to "drought-proof" North Georgia.
That was in the late 1980s. Nearly two decades later, neither has happened. Both ideas —- as well as a plan to tap more water from Lake Allatoona and Carters Lake —- aroused opposition from Alabama and Florida.
Kerr, the former Georgia water negotiator, said that if Georgia had gone for just one of the options at a time, "Alabama for sure and probably Florida would have been less inclined to go to war over it. I think it was the cumulative effect they were looking at."
The neighboring states claimed metro Atlanta was trying to hog water that otherwise would flow downstream to them.
Their subsequent lawsuits launched the 17-year-long interstate water war that so far has blocked permanent water reallocation and increased the risk of more legal challenges if Georgia builds regional reservoirs.
Early on, the states made a tactical decision to negotiate their differences, with each worried that they might lose if the case were decided by the courts. The resulting fact-finding and talks have dragged on for years.
Gwinnett's Hill said Georgia would have been better off had it stopped negotiating and taken the fight straight to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We have kind of sat back and waited to see what would happen, and nothing's happened," Hill said. "That's not been good for us ... If the court ruled against us, at least we'd have an answer and know what we have to do."
Barnes said he was trying to work on a number of fronts —- including setting aside funding to reduce water system leaks, pushing for more water conservation and creating a state water plan —- to bolster Georgia's case.
Barnes said if he had remained governor and failed to reach a deal with Florida and Alabama in 2003, his plan was to take Georgia's case to the nation's high court "so we could settle this issue before it became a crisis."
Brantley, Perdue's spokesman, said the current administration has chosen a path in the water war that "we thought would be most successful." That included pursuing continued negotiations with the other states and filing suit in federal district court against the Corps of Engineers, which manages Lanier.
'Nobody pushed hard'
In 1988, Leonard Ledbetter, then head of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, told legislators the regional reservoirs "need to get started."
Some would cover several thousand acres —- much less than the 38,000-acre Lanier. But there were supposed to be enough —- perhaps a dozen, officials said at one time —- to feed surrounding counties and avoid draining supplies closer to metro Atlanta.
The first of the lakes, called the West Georgia Regional Reservoir, was to be in Haralson County, home to Murphy, the powerful House speaker. It was no coincidence. Former Gov. Joe Frank Harris said he needed Murphy's help to fund the project.
"I believed if this one was established, the others would be a lot easier," Harris said recently.
The reservoir turned out to be a poor choice to launch the network, said Nolton Johnson, a former state reservoir manager and the retired head of Georgia's water resources branch.
Envisioned as a magnet for development, the lake would have been much bigger than was necessary for local water supplies. Such a large project just a few miles from the state border was sure to antagonize officials in neighboring Alabama who were convinced that Georgia wanted to hog water destined for downstream, Johnson said.
Years later, the state attempted to restart the project on a slightly different site and set aside more than $40 million for it. But the plans fell apart after Murphy and Barnes, both Democrats, were voted out of office, and state funds grew tight. The reservoir also sparked more controversy: It would have bordered hundreds of acres owned by Murphy and his family and could have significantly increased their property values.
In hindsight, Johnson said, Georgia should have tackled many regional reservoirs at once.
"Nobody pushed hard" for the state to build the others, said Harold Reheis, who headed the Georgia Environmental Protection Division from 1991 to 2003.
"Maybe somebody in state government should have taken it up, but when I took over EPD I had a lot more on my plate than building regional reservoirs," Reheis said. "I would have been glad to see somebody grab the banner and build them."
Then again, Georgia officials weren't anxious to incite Alabama and Florida, Kerr said. "Our strategy was not to add anything to the table that would be highly contentious and make it even more difficult to get an agreement."
Metro vs. rest of Georgia
Some local officials outside metro Atlanta weren't enamored of the state's program, said Wendell Dawson, a former Oconee County commission chairman.
They feared their water would be siphoned off for the city and its suburbs, he said. Dawson also remembers doubting the state's financial commitment.
"We came to believe if we were going to do it we would have to do it ourselves," he said. "The state just hadn't placed a lot of priority on water resources."
Dawson recalled that nearly 20 years ago a state EPD official showed him a map of a possible regional reservoir site in his area near where the Apalachee River crosses U.S. 78. Now, he said, there's a landfill and a subdivision on the spot.
While some county and city leaders built reservoirs on their own or with neighboring communities, the lakes generally provided less water than had been expected of the regional reservoirs.
Local officials found the process and costs daunting.
In Dahlonega, the price tag for a reservoir ballooned from about $4 million to $14 million. First envisioned in the 1980s, the proposed city-county lake didn't turn out to be big enough, and plans had to be reworked.
That forced another round of federal permitting to disturb environmentally sensitive wetlands.
Barnes agreed the state would fund and operate the project if the community bought land to put a state park around the lake. In the recent interview, he said he thought the state might one day expand the reservoir and use the extra water for other communities.
After Perdue became governor, the state backed out of the park plan, said Bill Lewis, Dahlonega's city manager. City officials eventually increased property tax rates by more than 50 percent to help pay for the reservoir and surrounding land.
"It's been a nightmare," Lewis said. "This is the worst project I've ever worked on."
The job still isn't over. The city and county need federal officials to amend permits to allow the enlarged lake.
While there's water sitting in the Yahoola Creek reservoir, the community can't use it until it builds a $22 million water treatment plant, to be completed in 2010, and gets a water withdrawal permit from the state.
But, Lewis said, even the reservoir is just a "short-term fix" for the growing city and surrounding county.
Pursuing additional water sources won't be simple either, he said. "If we start today it would take us to 2030 or so to find another water supply to get it permitted."
Threat to environment
As pretty as they look, man-made lakes are destructive. They flood environmentally sensitive wetlands and disrupt river ecosystems.
Federal officials are wary of local governments trying to build reservoirs that are bigger —- and harder on the environment —- than they need to be, said Nick Ogden, who formerly oversaw wetland permitting for the Corps of Engineers in Georgia. With so much competition for water, they "have to determine if that trade-off is worth it."
One result: The federal process tends to be toughest on communities trying to do what might be considered good planning.
It's harder to get approval for projects built large enough to supply water for several decades and to outlast droughts that are worse than those already experienced.
Metro Atlanta has a water plan, but it doesn't look very far ahead, given how long it takes to complete water projects. Adopted four years ago, it predicts the metro area will have enough water through at least 2030.
The plan assumes the region will get better at water conservation, though the state Legislature hasn't required a top water-saving recommendation: requiring low-flow plumbing retrofits when the area's million-plus older homes are resold.
The plan assumes Georgia will win the long-running tri-state water war. It also assumes completion of five local reservoirs, one of which Alabama recently asked a federal judge to block.
Planners also didn't figure the current drought —- or the potential for worse ones —- into their forecasts.
They should be anticipated in the future, though, said Georgia EPD Director Carol Couch. She also said the region should set more aggressive goals for conservation and for returning to rivers a higher percentage of water used.
"We are at a literal crossroads in this state's ability to support its very economy," she said. When it comes to water needs, "We've run out of time."
Johnson, the former head of water resources, said for decades "we didn't take water conservation seriously enough."
"It needs to be measured and monitored, and it needs to be sustainable and not just forgotten about once we get out of drought."
Gwinnett County's Hill said he doubts the current drought will mobilize decision makers to solve more than just immediate thirst.
"We will get real serious about it, and then it gets to raining, and we forget about it," Hill said. "And then there will be drought again, and we will question ourselves."
1970s
A second dam below Lake Lanier was proposed to provide more water for metro Atlanta —- but it was never built.
1980s
A network of regional reservoirs were planned for North Georgia —- but they never got off the drawing board.
1990s
The Corps of Engineers proposed releasing more water for metro Atlanta —- but downstream opposition stymied the plan.
The path to peril
1959: Competing demands
Lake Lanier opens for business under the management of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which over time uses the water and the dam for power generation, flood control, drinking water, etc. This enables Atlanta's phenomenal growth over coming decades but sets up competing demands that limit supplies in droughts.
1972-88: Dam discarded
The Corps of Engineers studies, recommends and finally discards the idea of building a second dam six miles downstream of Lanier to serve future drinking water needs. Sixteen years of planning comes to nothing.
1986: Reservoirs not built
Georgia proposes building a dozen or so regional reservoirs to "drought-proof" North Georgia. Environmentalists and other states object, and little progress is made. State funding is later set aside to build one regional reservoir, but it is never constructed.
1988: Reallocation
Instead of building a second dam, the corps backs a plan to reallocate millions of gallons a day from Lake Lanier for drinking, which the agency says would need congressional approval. That hasn't happened because of downstream opposition from Florida, Alabama and within Georgia.
1990: Water war begins
Alabama, later joined by Florida, launches the ongoing water war with Georgia, filing suit to block the reallocation at Lanier and raising concerns about water withdrawals from Lake Allatoona as well as Georgia's plans to build regional reservoirs. The three states agree to await the results of water studies, then begin years of negotiations trying to resolve their differences; the negotiations —- and litigation —- continue today.
1992: Plumbing
Georgia requires use of lower-flow plumbing fixtures in new homes, but more than 1 million older homes in the Atlanta area may still have water-wasting fixtures.
1998: Environmental concerns
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designates the fat three-ridge mussel, which lives downstream in Florida, as endangered. Along with protective designations for another mussel and a type of sturgeon, it eventually creates another legal demand on Lanier's water. Environmental concerns dog other possible water solutions, including regional reservoirs.
2002: Rain
A deep drought from 1998 to 2002 focuses government attention on water needs, as droughts did in 1980-82 and 1985-1989. When rains return, the immediacy of the issue and attention to costly solutions fade.
2003: Rosy assumptions
Planners determine metro Atlanta will have water through at least 2030 if reallocation, more aggressive conservation and a handful of planned local reservoirs happen. But the planners don't anticipate droughts worse than past ones. Later that year, facing a budget crunch, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division eliminates the job of its regional reservoir coordinator.
2004-07: More planning
Georgia EPD takes three years to produce a statewide water management plan that critics consider a plan to do a plan. Officials request a water study that would cost more than $30 million, adding to millions of dollars the state has spent over two decades studying water supplies.
Meanwhile, reallocation of Lanier's water remains unresolved. Legislators do not approve a top conservation recommendation: requiring low-flow fixtures when older homes are resold. Alabama sues to block one of the biggest proposed reservoirs in metro Atlanta, just as it nears completion.
Even now, when we were told that there was less than 100 days of water left, the big plan by our state government is: it's going to rain, we know it.
It is government in a nutshell: create a problem, watch it grow and hope you retire before it explodes in your face. If it does explode in your face blame it on the previous administration. We have become a nation of pathetic, self-serving bureaucrats and it doesn't matter what the party affiliation is.
A camel is a horse designed by bureaucrats and politicians.
come to Kalifornia and inspect a decent water system that has been screwed-over for 30-years.... The ninnies and greenies can mess-up anything.
To a lot of politicians, long term planning smacks of socialism. Thus restraining population growth and suburban sprawl is contrary to American values.
I live in the TVA
Great water management system
It is possible if you let the
Corp of Engineers do their thing
With just a little oversight
I quit reading the article when it turned into a hit piece on a GOP governor.
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