WaterWired

Florida Purchases Sugar Land to Help Restore Everglades

Nope, that's not Sugar Land, TX, but land used to grow sugar cane for sugar production in Florida.

Florida is spending $1.75B to purchase about 292 square miles of U.S. Sugar Corporation's holdings in the Everglades (see map, courtesy of the Washington Post). Those holdings equal the land area of the entire city of New York - all five boroughs.

Read about it in the New York Times.

U.S. Sugar Corporation is the USA's largest sugar cane grower. Here is the complete media kit from U.S. Sugar, which contains the statement of President and CEO Robert H. Buker, Jr., the details, Q&A, etc:

Download us_sugar_media_kit.pdf

The South Florida Water Management District, a quasi-governmental entity of the State of Florida, will assume control of the land, which will not occur for 6 years.  

It's not quite a done deal yet, however. More work needs to be done over the next few months.

The importance of the land acquistion cannot be underestimated. The purchased land will add about 1 million acre-feet of storage, and taking land out of agricultural production will reduce the phosphorus and nitrogen loads to the system. The former was a particular issue. Some of the "natural plumbing" will be restored.

The negotiations were a well-kept secret, and the announcement surprised a number of people.

Let's hope the Everglades are on the road to better health. 

“Most agencies want to spend the money making things happen and not spend the money finding out if they work." – Dr. William Dietrich, UC-Berkeley geomorphologist

A 'Mirage' in Oregon: Cynthia Barnett Visits Oregon State University

Cynthia Barnett, award-winning author of Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern  U.S., just left us at Oregon State University (OSU) after entertaining us for about 90 minutes with tales of water woes in Florida and elsewhere in the eastern USA.

We had a good crowd for a late Friday afternoon, and she also sold and signed some copies of her excellent book, which is now available in paperback, so you have no excuse for not reading it.

A brief aside: she commented on the dearth of home "For Sale" signs here as compared to Florida.

This is the third time I've heard Cynthia speak, all in the last six months. I told her that she is in my Robert Glennon class, meaning that I never tire of listening to her. Her style is more relaxed, as though she's having a cordial conversation with her audience. Very effective.

She again spoke of the merits of conservation, and how conservation is often given short shrift by politicians and water managers for a simple reason: no one makes much money from conservation projects. No big infrastructure, no grand engineering schemes, etc. She alluded to the fact that in Florida, state alternative water-supply grant money cannot be used for conservation projects.

To be sure, conservation can have its drawbacks. Customers get annoyed when their rates go up because conservation may drive utilities' revenues down. And those who save water are concerned that the water saved may just go for more development. Wastewater engineers worry about sluggish flow in sewer systems or lack of sufficient dilution.  But conservation should occupy a more prominent place in the water-supply toolbox.

She told the story of Orme, TN, the tiny (145 people) town on the TN-AL border 40 miles west of Chattanooga that ran out of water in 2007. The town temporarily survived by sending a tanker truck across the border to an Alabama town three days a week for water from the town's fire hydrant. The 20,000 gallons of water replenished the Orme's storage tank and allowed residents to use water from 6-9 PM each evening. Cynthia said that the story was big news and journalists descended upon the place, got the story, then headed home.

But they never came back to get the rest of the story. Here's what happened after the journalists left:

• volunteer plumbers and plumbing supply firms blitzed the town and fitted each home with water-saving devices free of charge;
• the town saved 140 gallons per household daily; and
• the water availability went from 3 to 12 hours per day solely because of conservation 

All in all, time very well spent with a person who has a great message.

And she brought some Florida sunshine with her.

"We use drinking water to grow our lawns, then spend the summer cutting it down using fossil fuels." -- Cynthia Barnett, Corvallis, OR, 2 May 2008

DC Report 3: Rep. David Price; Western States Water Council; FY2009 Budget

Yesterday morning at our NIWR meeting we heard from Rep. David Price (D-NC), a PhD political scientist and former Duke University professor who represents the Raleigh-Durham area.

Price contrasted the "old" water issues the East and Southeast formerly confronted: water pollution, flood control, and hydroelectric power generation. But things have changed, because now, the Southeast is experiencing serious water supplu problems. The Atlanta situation is well-known; I have even blogged about it. Memphis and Mississipi are squabbling over the city's pumping of ground water - 60 million gallons per day (mgd) - from beneath its southern neighbor. North Carolina is fighting the city of Virginia Beach's (VA) attempt to import 60 mgd from the Roanoke River via an 85-mile pipeline. And South Carolina is upset over North Carolina's diversions from the Catawba River.   

Price's own district has serious problem: Raleigh's supply is down to 119 days and Durham's is down to 243 days. In fact, 55% of North Carolina's population is under some kind of water conservation mandate.

If you are interested in learning more about the Southeast's water woes, check out Robert Osborne's excellent Watercrunch blog. He even recently "identified" an I-85 drought, that seems to be follow Interstate 85. Robert, you may have uncovered something of hydroclimatic significance!

What a change - sounds like good old fashioned Western wars!

Price noted that the Southeast, like the West, is growing rapidly. His own state faces high growth but has a limited water supply - no large rivers. Ground water is available in the state's coastal plain. He speculated about sustainable growth under such conditions, and called for sound water research to:

• improve infrastructure;
• identify efficient conservation measures;
• resolve interstate and intrastate conflicts; and
• forecast accurately.

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Last night we heard from Tony Willardson, Deputy Director of the Western States Water Council (WSWC), which is part of the Western Governors' Association (WGA). Tony mentioned that the WGA visualizes six water or water-related issues:

• growth;
• data;
• infrastructure;
• climate change;
• Indian water rights; and
• endangered species

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Several people told us that this will be a contentious year for the budget process, with the Democrats perhaps trying to hold out for a Democratic president who won't veto their budget. President Bush will not want to appear to be "caving in" to Congress during his final year. The word is that the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security will get their money, supplemental funding will be appropriated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but everything else might have to wait until the 111th Congress.

Could be a wild ride this year.

"The difference between an economist and a political scientist is that the economist believes people are rational." -- Unknown, courtesy of Tony Willardson

Georgia-Tennessee Border War for Water Access

The 20 February 2008 NBC Nightly News had a feature on the Georgia-Tennessee "border war" for access to the Tennessee River. Here is the video clip (you will have to watch a 30-second commerical).

Colleague Aaron Wolf sent me this story from the 17 February 2008 issue of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The accompanying picture is from the story.

The article reports that some Tennesseans are sympathetic to Georgia's argument and its drought-stricken plight. Here's one:

"It's not necessarily our water," said Kate McBryar. "I don't see why Georgia can't use our water if they are having a drought. Why not help our countrymen?"

I suspect most of her fellow Tennesseans might not be so generous towards Georgia, and Atlanta, the "Las Vegas" of Southeastern water.

"I was pretty much just having fun. I didn't expect anything to come from it." surveyor Bart Crattie, commenting on the 1818 surveying error he pointed out.

Solution to Georgia's Water Woes: Annex Part of Tennessee

You've know doubt read by now that Georgia has lost its dispute with Alabama and Florida about water withdrawals from Lake Sidney Lanier (see these New York Times and Environment News Service articles). A federal appellate-court panel ruled that the state can not withdraw as much water as it wanted to from the reservoir. So Atlanta must look elsewhere for more drinking water, or better conserve what they have.

The picture of Buford Dam on Lake Sidney Lanier is from the Environment News Service article, courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

It is unclear whether Georgia will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Looks like the "lovey-dovey" relationship among Alabama, Florida, and Georgia (see my earlier post) may be on hold for a while.

From the NYT story:

Though the fast-growing Atlanta area relies on the reservoir, the other states have argued that Georgia has done little water planning over the decades and has not tied growth and development to water resources.

On Wednesday, Gov. Sonny Perdue is scheduled to sign into law Georgia’s first comprehensive water management plan, which was hastily approved by both houses of the General Assembly last month in the opening days of the 2008 legislative session. Environmental groups have already criticized the plan as ineffectual in the face of a record drought, which could threaten the drinking water for four million people.

What? Not tied growth and development to water resources? Are those folks daft?

But these Easterners are proving themselves adept at water wars. Want more water? Just annex part of another state!

Here's a story by Ben Smith from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

A couple of state lawmakers want to annex a piece of Tennessee to get more water for Georgia.

State Sen. David Shafer (R-Duluth) and state Rep. Harry Geisinger (R-Roswell) on Wednesday introduced companion resolutions to stake a claim on a one-mile stretch of disputed land that they say rightfully belongs to Georgia.

If Georgia were to take that land, the state's new border would stretch beyond the south bank of the Tennessee River, one of the largest tributaries in the Southeast.

Georgia was shortchanged of the land because of a "flawed survey conducted in 1818 and never accepted by the state of Georgia," Shafer said.

"A misplaced survey marker is just that and nothing more," he said. "A state boundary can only be changed by the legislatures of the states, with the consent of Congress. It cannot be changed by a mathematician with a faulty compass or a skittish surveying party afraid of the Indians."

Nobody need be alarmed that such resolutions might be a prelude to a second, much smaller, War Between the States.

They merely call for the creation of two panels to investigate Georgia's possible legal claims to land on the other side of the Tennessee and North Carolina borders.

See what Tennessee thinks of all this - read the article in the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Chattanooga is on the Tennessee River, just across the border from Georgia. One Tennessee lawmaker, House Majority Leader Gary Odom (D-Nashville) quipped "I think we need to have our militia down there."

Note added 15 February 2008: Here is an article from the 15 February 2008 edition of the Christian Science Monitor. The accompanying map is from the article.

"What's the best thing to come out of Alabama? Interstate 85. What's the second-best thing? Interstate 20. " -- Georgia joke

Mississippi vs. Memphis: Case Dismissed, But It Ain't Over Till It's Over

A Federal District Court Judge dismissed the $1B lawsuit filed by Mississippi against Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) over MLGW's pumping of ground water from beneath Mississippi (see my earlier post about this issue).

Judge Glen H. Davidson ruled that his court does not have jurisdiction, since the case involves two states, and such disputes must be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.  Although Tennessee is not a defendant, the judge ruled that the state must be brought into the case as a "necessary and indispensable" party, making it a dispute between two states.

The court dismissed the case without prejudice. Mississippi can now appeal the case or file with the Supreme Court. Attorneys for the state said they will appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and, if unsuccessful there, file before the Supreme Court.

Tom Charlier of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal gives the full story.

But stay tuned, because the fat lady hasn't sung yet.

"The opera isn't over till the fat lady sings." -- Dick Motta, former NBA coach

Pumping from the Memphis Sand Aquifer: Is Memphis Kicking Sand in Mississippi's Face?

So what business do I have posting on the Memphis Sand aquifer and the lawsuit between Mississippi and Memphis it has spawned? None, really, except that I was quoted in an article by Tom Charlier about the impending trial in Oxford, MS, in last Sunday's edition of the Memphis Commercial-Appeal. And I just finished a 30-minute phone interview with reporter Stephen Koranda from Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB).

I am reminded of an adage we used back in the 1970s:

Definition of an expert: someone who comes from more than 500 miles away and has colored transparencies.

In this case, I did not even have colored transparencies.

I am not an expert on this aquifer; I was contacted to opine because I know something about transboundary aquifers. And one reason for seeking out-of-area experts is that local ones may be called upon to testify and don't want to make comments to the media.

In a nutshell, the case boils down to Mississippi claiming that Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW), the municipally-utility for the Memphis area (Shelby County), is deriving about 30% of the water it pumps from the Memphis Sand aquifer (aka the Sparta aquifer) from beneath Mississippi. This amounts to about 60 mgd (million gallons per day) coming from beneath the Mississipians' land. Total MLGW pumpage from the aquifer is about 160-200 mgd. The Memphis Sand's water is reputedly some of the best ground water in the USA, and the aquifer supplies drinking water to over 1.1 million residents of Shelby County.

This is no nickel-and-dime lawsuit; the damages sought by Mississippi amount to $1 billion, and if the Memphis utility loses, it would be forced to reduce its pumping and obtain some of its water from the Mississippi River, which would entail the construction of an expensive water treatment plant.

Most of the "harm" to Mississippi occurs in DeSoto County, a rapidly-growing suburb of Memphis. Well water levels there have been dropping -- that's what happens when you pump water from an aquifer, folks, until you increase recharge or decrease discharge to offset the pumping rate.  Mississippi contends that some of the declines are due to Memphis' pumping and constitute "harm". Memphis claims that its use is "reasonable" and not reducing the water availability in Mississippi.

Here are some additional background articles (thanks to Ricky Clifton):

1. Business TN (February 2007); and
2. U.S. Water News (March 2005)

The Memphis Sand underlies about 10,000 square miles of AR, TN, MS and KY; some reports state that parts of it extend into IL, MO, and northern LA. It occurs within a geologic-physiographic feature known as the Mississippi Embayment, a northward extension of the Mississippi River Delta's fluvial sediments from southern Louisiana to the Mississippi's confluence with the Ohio River at Cairo (that's "Cay-ro"), IL (see relief diagram). It is a topographic low, filled with sediments.

The cross-section from Mississippi State University's Department of Geosciences shows the Memphis Sand, which is up to 700 feet thick beneath Memphis and estimated to contain up to 1 trillion gallons of high-quality water. Note that the vertical exaggeration of the cross section is huge; the dip angles of the individual strata are under 1 degree.

 

Here is what the University of Tennessee's Energy, Environment and Resources Center (EERC) said about the case in a report several years ago (from the Business TN article):

*The appellate court in Tennessee has rejected the absolute dominion rule, which allows a surface owner to pump any amount of water from an aquifer regardless of the damage it does to the rights of other landowners overlying the same aquifer. The court concluded that overlying landowners are restricted to a reasonable exercise of their mutual rights in the common source.

* Under common law, water pumped from an aquifer can only be used on land overlying the aquifer that is owned by the pumper. This is a situation where the common law has not yet caught up with the contemporary reality of large scale pumping for use [and sale] off-site.

*If MLGW has been pumping water from the aquifer so as to diminish the flow and pressure to others wells for a period sufficient to allow the company to acquire rights to the water through prescription (probably 20 years), then the company may have acquired rights to this water.

*Under Tennessee law, incomplete as the record is, if the volume that MLGW is pumping is unreasonably high, much more than their share of the water from the aquifer, their actions are illegal if another overlying user complains.

*Because the Memphis Sand aquifer underlies land in several states, it is entirely possible that this dispute could also lead to a suit for apportionment of the waters of the aquifer … Such a suit would likely originate in the U.S. Supreme Court as an equitable apportionment suit. The Supreme Court has never apportioned the water in an underground aquifer ... the outcome might be unfavorable to MLGW and Memphis water users because there is another source, the Mississippi River.

This a fascinating case; it is more akin to what we'd expect out here in the West. My water-lawyer friends also agree this is a very interesting case, what with a state suing a city utility in another state for supplying water to its residents. It may result in the states agreeing to the allocation of the aquifer's water. That's what should be happening now.

The trial begins 4 February 2008. Stay tuned.

                                       Happy World Wetlands Day!

Update, 4 February 2008: Well, that was quick - the judge dismissed the case, saying that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction (thanks again to Ricky Clifton). See my post.

"Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet." -- Frank Hubbard

Stream Restoration Efforts: Ooops...

Two geologists at Franklin and Marshall College are  suggesting that the models upon which stream restoration efforts have been based may be flawed because they were deverloped by studying "non-natural" streams, many of which are in the Mid-Atlantic states.

Here is the New York Times' 18 January 2008 article by Cornelia Deans.

Dr. Robert Walter and Dr. Dorothy J. Merritts, in a recent Science paper, say the streams studied by their geological predecessors were not “natural archetypes” but rather the artifacts of 18th- and 19th-century dam building and deforestation.

The article continues:

The researchers examined historical records and maps, geochemical data, aerial photographs and other imagery from river systems in Pennsylvania and Maryland. They discovered that beginning in the 1700s, European settlers built tens of thousands of dams, with perhaps almost 18,000 or more in Pennsylvania alone.

In a telephone interview, Dr. Merritts described a typical scenario. Settlers build a dam across a valley to power a grist mill, and a pond forms behind the dam, inundating the original valley wetland. Meanwhile, the settlers clear hillsides for farming, sending vast quantities of eroded silt washing into the pond.

Years go by. The valley bottom fills with sediment trapped behind the dam. By 1900 or so the dam is long out of use and eventually fails. Water begins to flow freely through the valley again. But now, instead of reverting to branching channels moving over and through extensive valley wetlands, the stream cuts a sharp path through accumulated sediment. This is the kind of stream that earlier researchers thought was natural.

“This early work was excellent,” Dr. Merritts said, “but it was done unknowingly in breached millponds.”

She said she and Dr. Walter believed their work had important implications for stream restoration. For one thing, she said, evidence so far suggests that removing the overlay of sediment may encourage streams to return to a truly natural state. But also, she added, restoration “requires much more consideration of what we are trying to restore, and what might actually be a sustainable approach.”

NPR also has an excellent story by John Nielsen on Walter's and Merritts' work. 

The two smaller pictures - of a dam and Merritts - are from the NPR story. The larger one of Walter is from his F&M home page.

Here is an excerpt from that story:

David Montgomery, a geologist at the University of Washington (UW), says the paper is also a cautionary tale for everyone involved in river restoration projects.

For example, says Montgomery, "if you are trying to restore rivers in a way that will benefit fish and other organisms — if you're not just trying to make them look pretty — the best model for that is the system in which they evolved and thrived."

Basically, if you want to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, you need to know exactly what he looked like in the first place.

Merritts and Walter say it's likely that the landscape underneath a lot of winding rivers was dominated by broad wetlands full of tangled water channels. Walter says those broad wetlands are now all but nonexistent in the East. Whether they will be restored on a large scale is an open question, he says.

Ain't science wonderful!

"Never assume anything but a 4% loan" --Unknown

An Orphan River: The Mississippi's Water Quality

The National Research Council (NRC) has just issued a report, Mississippi River Water Quality and the Clean Water Act: Progress, Challenges, and Opportunities. You can click here to read the report for free online or purchase a copy. You can download a copy of the press release below.

Download water_quality_in_mississippi_river.htm

The following article, 'Orphan River', by Sara Frueh, is from the National Academies InFocus magazine, Volume 7, No. 3 (Fall 2007).

No river has played a more central role in American literature and history than the Mississippi, the river that carried Huckleberry Finn's raft and serves as the symbolic dividing line between east and west. And the Mississippi's economic and ecological importance continues to be enormous. Tens of millions of people in 10 states depend on it for drinking water and recreation, and hundreds of millions of tons of grain and other goods are shipped along the waterway every year. The rivers of about 40 percent of the continental United States drain into the Mississippi, which is also home to the longest river wildlife and fish refuge in the lower 48 states.

Despite its significance, however, the Mississippi is an "orphan" in terms of efforts to monitor its water quality and reduce pollution, says a new report from the National Research Council that evaluates efforts to implement the Clean Water Act (CWA) on the Mississippi. Currently there is no single system to monitor pollution levels along the river's entire length, the report observes. And though states on the Mississippi have assumed most authority for implementing the Act, the resources they dedicate to monitoring the river vary widely, as do their standards for water quality.

This lack of coordination has made it difficult to address pollution problems in the river, some of which are significant, the report says. Although the Clean Water Act has successfully reduced direct discharges of pollution from industry and wastewater treatment plants, less-direct forms of contamination -- for example, nutrients and sediments that enter the river and its tributaries through runoff -- are still a problem in the Mississippi. High levels of nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorous from fertilizers used on farm fields, are polluting the river itself and contributing to an oxygen-deficient "dead zone" in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Sediments are a more complex challenge; in the upper Mississippi they often are too plentiful and considered a pollutant, while in the lower river, sediments are too scarce -- a shortfall that is contributing to losses of coastal wetlands in southern Louisiana.

Addressing these and other water-quality problems will require the U.S. Environmental Protection  Agency (EPA) to take a stronger leadership role in implementing the Clean Water Act along the Mississippi and in the northern Gulf of Mexico, the report says. For example, EPA should take the lead in establishing a single program to monitor water quality in the entire Mississippi. In addition, the agency should develop water-quality standards that protect the river and Gulf from excessive nutrient pollution. And EPA should develop what is known as a federal Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for these nutrient pollutants; this is a limit set on the total amount of a pollutant that the river and northern Gulf can accept and still meet water-quality standards. The agency has successfully led a multistate effort to better manage nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, the report notes, and it should draw upon that experience when stepping up its efforts along the Mississippi.

States should take steps to improve their teamwork as well, the report says. In particular, states along the lower Mississippi should strive to create a cooperative organization similar to one already in place for states along the upper river. And the report calls on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to aggressively apply its conservation programs in order to reduce polluted runoff from agriculture. EPA should work with USDA to ensure that these programs are targeted to areas where runoff of nutrients and sediments is most severe.
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"He who dies with the most toys is, nonetheless, dead." -- Unknown

Report: Water Use Efficiency in the Atlanta Region

This just in from the Pacific Institute. The report was done in 2006 but has just been released to the public.

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In a previously unreleased analysis, the Pacific Institute reviewed the potential for improving water use efficiency in the Atlanta, Georgia, region. That analysis concluded that Atlanta has significant, untapped potential for reducing its inefficient use of water while providing for population growth and development, and that local agencies have both underestimated this potential and under-invested in programs and policies that might help reduce their inefficient water use.

Given the growing crisis over water in the region due to the severe drought, and the conflict with neighboring states of Alabama and Florida, the Pacific Institute is releasing this analysis to the public.

The full report can be found here.

For further information, call Ian Hart, Communications Director: 510 251-1600.

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"Sacred cows make great hamburgers." -- Anonymous

Alabama, Georgia, and Florida Make Nice - For Now

Looks like a water war in the Southeast will be averted for now, with an agreement reached last week among the governors of Florida, Alabama, and Georgia and relevant federal agencies. The Bush Administration mediated the compromise. But the compromise must be submmitted to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) for approval, which promised a decision within two weeks. If the USFWS does not approve, then it's back to the drawing board.

The Birmingham News' Mary Orndorff reported on this in the paper's 2 November 2007 edition, which served as the basis for this post.

But Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said he is not dropping his lawsuit opposing plans for the Corps' to update its operating guidelines for the river systems - the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) and the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT). The compromise does allow the governors more say on how the Corps rewrites the guidelines.

Atlanta is happier, as this means more water will remain in Lake Sidney Lanier, its main water supply. Minimum flows in the ACF basin will be reduced from 5,000 cfs (cubic feet per second) to 4,200 cfs.  The Corps will do this over several weeks.

The governors agreed to meet again in Florida in December, and to develop a more permanent solution by mid-February.

This fuss over the ACF and ACT basins has been ongoing for about 20 years.

Keep your fingers crossed, and pray for rain.

"Water is the only drink for a wise man." -- H.D. Thoreau

New Jersey: No Drinking Water By 2020?

The article below is from the 24 October 2007 Asbury Park Press; Tom Baldwin is the reporter. Looks like the New Jersey water folks did not have 20-20 vision.

Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM) had it wrong - the West will need to send water to the East.

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New Jersey Drinking Water Running Out

Supplies won't meet projected needs by 2020

TRENTON — New Jersey officials heard sobering news Tuesday that the state is running out of drinking water, but environmentalists said the bigger problem is the government is not doing anything about it.

"This is not a problem we have in the future. This is a problem we have today," said Joseph Maraziti, a former chairman of the State Planning Commission, addressing the state Clean Water Council's annual public hearing.

"We have a gross underinvestment in infrastructure," Maraziti said, noting the crisis might strike by 2020, not long after today's first-graders graduate from high school.

Fletcher Platt, executive vice president of the Millburn-based engineering consulting firm Hatch Mott MacDonald, said New Jersey's nearly 8.8 million residents will swell in numbers by a million by 2020.

"We do have 100-year-old water-distribution systems," Platt said, noting water supplies are inadequate to meet projected needs.

Platt foresees faster population growth in New Jersey than the Census Bureau, which projects the state will have nearly 9.5 million residents in 2020. It wouldn't reach 9.8 million residents until 2030, under those 2005 federal projections.

Others at Tuesday's hearing also voiced concern about the water infrastructure.

"We've been drunk with water," said Ben Spinelli, executive director of the State Planning Commission, saying the biggest problem is neglect.

"We are probably going to be the first state in the nation to reach build-out . . . The infrastructure that is in the ground has started to reach the end of its useful age," Spinelli said.

Sheila Frace from the federal Environmental Protection Agency said the politics of water, common in parched Western states, is moving east.

"Where we have been is not going to get us to where we are going," Frace said, noting climate change is an added dimension to the demand-supply problem.

Water, said Cranbury Mayor David Stout, has been the foundation of all civilizations.

As if they were symbols of the problem, plastic-wrapped cases of bottled water rested on a table at one side of the room, though participants could have sated their thirsts at the drinking fountains out in the hall.

Environmentalists such as Jeff Tittel of the Sierra Club, coupled with David Pringle of the New Jersey Environmental Federation, said they have heard these forecasts with annual regularity, but they see no action by Trenton.

"It's the same message year in and year out," said Pringle. "Nothing changes. Are they going to get it this time? Our water supply is getting increasingly polluted, and the state doesn't have the policies in place to address that."

"The state actually has policies that undermine clean water," said Tittel, such as spending $250 million in tax dollars to build a golf course on the Meadowlands instead of fixing Paterson's piping so rain-driven sewage does not spill into nearby streams.

Tittel said monitors on rivers show that pollution has moved 10 miles west, upstream in east-flowing streams, such as the Metedeconk, and 10 miles east, upstream on west-flowing rivers that empty into the Delaware River.

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"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go with others." -- African proverb

Something New for the South: Adapting to Drought (Or Not)

This article appeared in today's New York Times.

A big issue in the Georgia-Atlanta water situation is the release of water from Lake Sidney Lanier down the Chattahoochee River to maintain environmental flows for endangered species. We have faced this issue in the West for a number of years.

Last week, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue filed an injunction against the Corps of Engineers to stop the release of water from Lake Lanier. Alabama claims it needs the water, and Florida needs it to maintain the fishery in Apalachicola Bay. For years, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama have tried to negotiate a compact governing the ACF (Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint) river basin to no avail. The existence of such a compact might have improved the situation somewhat, but it certainly would not have mitigated the drought itself.

Certainly, the lack of drought planning is a major issue here. No one saw this coming, or if they did, they chose not to do anything about it.

What's that about the disconnect between land use planning and water planning?

Visit the Watercrunch blog to see the latest information on this issue.

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New to Being Dry, the South Struggles to Adapt

by Shaila Dewan and Brenda Goodman, the New York Times, 23 October 2007

ATLANTA, Oct. 22 — For more than five months, the lake that provides drinking water to almost five million people here has been draining away in a withering drought. Sandy beaches have expanded into flats of orange mud. Tree stumps not seen in half a century have resurfaced. Scientists have warned of impending disaster.

And life, for the most part, has gone on just as before.

Dock at Lake Sidney Lanier (courtesy the New York Times)

The response to the worst drought on record in the Southeast has unfolded in ultra-slow motion. All summer, more than a year after the drought began, fountains sprayed and football fields were watered, prisoners got two showers a day and Coca-Cola’s bottling plants chugged along at full strength. On an 81-degree day this month, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million-gallon mountain of snow.

By September, with the lake forecast to dip into the dregs of its storage capacity in less than four months, the state imposed a ban on outdoor water use.

Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia declared October “Take a Shorter Shower Month.” And Saturday, Mr. Perdue declared a state of emergency for more than half the state and asked for federal assistance, though the state has not yet restricted indoor water use or cut back on major commercial and industrial users, a step that could cause a significant loss of jobs.

These last-minute measures belie a history of inaction in Georgia and across the South when it comes to managing and conserving water, even in the face of rapid growth. Between 1990 and 2000, water use in Georgia increased 30 percent. But the state has not yet come up with an estimate of how much water is available during periods of normal rainfall, much less a plan to handle the worst-case event — dry faucets.

“We have made it clear to the planners and executive management of this state for years that we may very well be on the verge of a systemwide emergency,” said Mark Crisp, a water expert in the Atlanta office of the engineering firm C. H. Guernsey.

But a sense of urgency has been slow to take hold. Last year, a bill died in the Georgia Legislature that would have required that low-flow water devices be installed in older houses before they are resold. Most golf courses are classified as “agricultural.” Water permits are still approved first come first served.

And Georgia is not at the back of the pack. Alabama, where severe drought is even more widespread, is even further behind in its planning.

A realistic statewide plan, experts say, would tell developers that they could not build if no water was available, and might have restricted some of the enormous growth in the Atlanta area over the last decade. Already, officials have little notion how to provide for a projected doubling of demand over the next 30 years. The ideas that have been floated, including piping in water from Tennessee or desalinating ocean water, would require hundreds of billions of dollars and painful decision making the state has been reluctant to undertake.

“It’s been develop first and ask questions later,” said Gil Rogers, a lawyer with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Instead, Georgia has engaged in interminable squabbles with neighboring states over dam releases and flow rates. The latest effort at mediation with Alabama fell apart just last month. And Georgia officials insist that Atlanta would have plenty of water were it not for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which they say has released more water from its main source of water, Lake Lanier, than is necessary to protect three endangered species downstream. Last week, Mr. Perdue filed for an injunction against the corps to stop the release of water. (Downstream, Alabama officials responded in protest, saying they need the releases.)

“We are not here because we consumed our way into this drought, as some would suggest,” said Carol Couch, Mr. Perdue’s director of environmental protection.

Those making that argument against Georgia include many people in Florida, the only state in the region to have adopted a water plan and home to the downstream end of the basin that includes Lake Lanier. An editorial Friday in the St. Petersburg Times said that the blame lay not with the corps but with “a record drought, unrestrained population growth and poor water-conservation habits.”

Bruce A. Karas, vice president of sustainability for Coca-Cola, said no one from the City of Atlanta or its water planning district had approached company officials to ask them to conserve water. Mr. Karas said the company had worked to reduce consumption on its own since 2004.

“We’re very concerned,” Mr. Karas said. “Water is our main ingredient. As a company, we look at areas where we expect water abundance and water scarcity, and we know water is scarce in the Southwest. It’s very surprising to us that the Southeast is in a water shortage.”

Mary Kay Woodworth, executive director of the Metro Atlanta Landscape and Turf Association, said almost 14,000 workers in landscaping and other businesses that depend on planting and watering had lost their jobs.

“This is a precious natural resource, and it has not been managed well,” Ms. Woodworth said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re in this situation today. The infrastructure was not in place for the development.”

In 2001, the state did establish the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District for 16 counties and dozens of jurisdictions in the Atlanta area. The district has focused on conservation pricing, under which the price of water rises with consumption, and on incentives for replacing inefficient plumbing and monitoring for leaks, a major cause of water loss.

Some environmentalists criticize the district, saying its requirements are weak and its progress unmeasured. The district’s projections, they say, are based on an outdated estimate of water availability, provided by the state, that does not take into account climate change. Pat Stevens, chief environmental planner for the Atlanta Regional Committee, which provides employees to the water district, said the plan was being revised and the requirements would tighten.

“You can’t just do this overnight,” Ms. Stevens said. “Otherwise, you will close businesses.”

“We will out-conservation California,” she added. “But, you know, it takes time.”

In January, the Legislature will consider a proposal to expand the planning process statewide.

State officials defend their response, saying the drought got very bad very quickly.

And Georgia is not the only state in trouble. The drought has afflicted most of the Southeast, a region that is accustomed to abundant water and that tends to view mandatory restrictions as government meddling. Lake Lanier is part of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River system, which forms much of the border between Georgia and Alabama and then spills into Florida. There, the river provides a habitat for two types of mussel and a sturgeon that are endangered.

The temptation to blame the corps is strong. Because of years of litigation, the corps operates the dams on the river system under an interim policy driven largely by the need to protect the endangered species of fish and shellfish downstream. Critics say the policy’s minimum-flow requirement does not take into account severe dry spells and is not supported by science. Mr. Perdue has said that the flow is twice what nature would provide under similar circumstances.

Two weekends ago, the corps added to the pain in North Georgia by increasing the flow out of Lake Lanier even as it was shrinking. The lake is the only one in the basin that still has water in what is considered the storage pool, usually the top 60 percent of capacity. (Using the remaining water, called “dead storage,” could require different intake mechanisms and more treatment.)

In response to Mr. Perdue’s complaints, the corps has agreed to consult the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, which protects endangered species, about modifying flow requirements in the Apalachicola River.

With a public anxious over the possibility of running out of water, the corps has not been the only entity to shoulder blame.

On Oct. 1, Stone Mountain Park began to make snow for a winter mountain, hoping to attract children who had not seen the real thing. The mountain was planned during the very wet summer of 2005, and the state and local governments were duly informed, said Christine Parker, a spokeswoman for the park.

The state announced a Level 4 drought response on a Friday and, after park officials reviewed the list of exceptions for businesses, snow-blowing began the following Monday, before much of the public had fully grasped the severity of the situation. After the project was ridiculed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the park shut it down. Ms. Parker said that only then did the park hear from state environmental authorities.

Stone Mountain had never intended to take a cavalier attitude toward the drought, Ms. Parker said, but had not been given any guidance.

“A lot of businesses are having to go out and ask the right questions,” she said, “so they can do the right thing.”

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If you want to keep up with the Altanta water situation and the Southeast drought, read Robert Osborne's excellent Watercrunch blog.

"Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." -- Anonymous

Hot 'Lanta in Hot Water? Or No Water?

Well, things don't look good for Atlanta, my favorite city in north Georgia and the "Las Vegas" of the Southeast. Its main water supply, Lake Sidney Lanier, has about three months' storage remaining. Stacy Shelton, in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reported on this in the paper's 11 October 2007 edition. I've pasted the article below, which can be found here. The pictures, from the article, are aerial views of the lake showing boat docks.

Here is an article about the drought in entire Southeast, 26% of which is covered by an "exceptional" drought, the National Weather Service's (NWS) worst drought category. There is also an NPR story on the Southeast drought; click NPR.

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By STACY SHELTON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/11/07

Lake Sidney Lanier, metro Atlanta's main source of water, has about three months of storage left, according to state and federal officials.

That's three months before there's not enough water for more than 3 million metro Atlantans to take showers, flush their toilets and cook. Three months before there's not enough water in parts of the Chattahoochee River for power plants to make the steam necessary to generate electricity. Three months before part of the river runs dry.

We've never experienced this situation before," state Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch said of the record-breaking drought and fast-falling lake.

In two weeks, Couch plans to give Gov. Sonny Perdue a list of options to further restrict water use by businesses and industries, along with an analysis of potential water savings and estimated job losses. Some exemptions to the state's ban on outdoor watering in north Georgia could end, including those applied to water-dependent businesses such as car washes, pressure washing companies and landscapers. Couch's staff is still working on the details.

She said she fully expects an economic hit if substantial rain doesn't fall soon and the emergency actions are taken.

"There has to be a balance between determining how much water we can conserve against how much lost jobs and lost economy there is," Couch said. "You don't do that lightly."

Landscapers already have suffered. Days after the outdoor ban was ordered Sept. 28, Mary Kay Woodworth of the Urban Agriculture Council trade group said landscapers' phones around the region stopped ringing. "Immediately, employees were laid off. Contracts waiting on signatures — from $3,000 jobs to $150,000 installations — were canceled."

Other heavy water users are considering their options. A Pepsico Inc. plant that produces Gatorade, which is the biggest water user in the city of Atlanta, is figuring out ways to cut down further on its use in the next 30 days. Coca-Cola is waiting to see what restrictions might be imposed at its Atlanta syrup plant, but has already cut back as part of a corporate water conservation plan.

Some water providers are asking big users like manufacturers to voluntarily cut back and are making emergency plans to install equipment to pump water from unprecedented depths of Lanier and the Chattahoochee.

Fate depends on Corps

How bad things could get depends on rain, and the forecast is not promising. October is normally the year's driest month, and climatologists say another dry, warm winter is ahead.

Metro Atlanta's water fate also depends largely on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency that owns and operates Buford Dam and the 38,000-acre lake that sits behind it, bordered by Gwinnett, Hall and Forysth Counties. This month, the Corps has released from Lanier more than four times as much water as flows in from the Chattahoochee and other feeder streams. But that's far less than last month, when the Corps released 35 times as much water out of Lanier than flowed in.

More than a billion gallons leave the lake every day, more than twice the amount metro Atlanta uses. Much of it flows past the city into West Point Lake, another federal reservoir near LaGrange, then along the Alabama border and eventually to Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

Pat Stevens, an environmental planner for the Atlanta Regional Commission who regularly keeps tabs on how much water is available for Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, DeKalb and other metro Atlanta governments, said the Corps' "wastes water unnaturally."

"When you move into a drought like we've moved into, you'll drain the system," Stevens said.

The Corps' water releases are based on two key requirements: the minimum flow needed to operate Plant Scholtz, Gulf Power's small coal-fired facility just below Lake Seminole, and federal mandates to protect two mussel species in a Florida river.

If the Chattahoochee were undammed and running freely, Mother Nature would be providing only half the water the Corps is sending, Corps officials have said.

Val Perry Jr., a homeowner and officer of the Lake Lanier Association, told the Corps last week that "If there were no dams at all, some mussels would die and [the species would] not become extinct. ... Does a couple of mussels trump 5 million people? What I hear from the Corps is that the answer to that is yes."

Together with Lanier, four other federal lakes on the Chattahoochee combine to send water toward the Apalachicola River in Florida, which is formed by the waters of Georgia's Chattahoochee and Flint rivers. But no one knows whether the mussels — the endangered fat threeridge and threatened purple bankclimber — actually need the 3 billion gallons they get every day.

"The real big question is how low can you go to not allow the species to go down the slippery slope of extinction?" said Sandra Tucker, a field supervisor with the wildlife service in Georgia. "Those are things we just really don't know."

But even if the mussels could survive with less water, the coal plant could not, said Lynn Erickson, a Gulf Power spokeswoman. The plant, which opened in 1953 and produces enough electricity to power as many as 19,000 homes, had to lower its water withdrawal pipe on the Apalachicola River about 25 years ago. To go lower probably wouldn't be cost effective, Erickson said.

"This is a small plant in the whole scheme of things," Erickson said. "But it's a critical piece of the whole system." It ensures reliability for an entire region that includes Tallahassee, southeast Alabama and southwest Georgia.

State and regional representatives, including Couch and Georgia's congressional delegation, have been asking the Corps to reconsider its releases for the power plant and the mussels for more than a year. So far, the answer has been no.

"We are required to maintain [the minimum flow]," said Corps spokeswoman Lisa Coghlan. "As we march on, we're going to seriously be looking at our emergency operations and how we provide relief."

The Corps last month predicted Lanier, in the worst-case scenario, could drop another 19 feet by the end of the year to set a new historic low that would threaten metro Atlanta's drinking supply sometime next year.

Mark Crisp, a water expert in Atlanta with the national consulting firm C.H. Guernsey & Co., has said for years that metro Atlanta is asking too much from Lanier. Most of the region's population — and one-third of the state's population — relyon the smallest river basin in the Georgia. In fact, it's the largest metropolitan region in the country depending on a river so small.

As Couch put it, "All our eggs are in one basket."

Now Crisp's warnings seem even more prescient. The active storm season that rescued the state during the last drought — from 1998 to 2002 — is unlikely.

"We're already on the downside of the hurricane season so that hope and a prayer has pretty much gone away," said Crisp, whose clients include customers buying electricity generated at Lanier's Buford Dam. "At this point, as bad as it has gotten, we've got to start thinking about the doomsday, at least saying to each other, 'How are we going to handle it if it comes?'"

Stevens, the ARC's environmental planner, said she "doesn't even want to think about" the fallout if Lanier drops to 31 feet below its full level.

Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said the state has fought in the tri-state legal water wars and has restricted outdoor watering, with the worst-case scenario in mind.

"The Level 4 declaration is just the latest step in asking Georgians to do their part to conserve as much of our existing resources as possible."

If that's not enough, the first sign of trouble for metro Atlantans could be lowered water pressure, as the water systems strain to pull water out of a dwindling river and lake.

Corps acknowledged mistake

Compounding this year's problem was a huge mistake by the Corps in 2006.

That spring, just as the drought was beginning, the Corps released billions of gallons of additional water from Lanier to the Apalachicola River, for the spawning season of the threatened Gulf sturgeon. So few of the prehistoric fish remain that a federal biologist in Florida has estimated fewer than 10 females are able to spawn in any given year.

The Corps discovered it had relied on a faulty gauge to measure Lanier's level — overestimating the amount of water left in the lake by nearly 2 feet. That meant the Corps had accidentally released 22 billion gallons of water: enough to supply metro Atlanta's needs for about a month and a half.

EPD Director Couch first sent out a warning in June of last year that metro Atlanta's drinking water supply was in jeopardy, thanks to the Corps' releases, which she said were twice the amount needed for the threatened fish. The Corps has since acknowledged it released more water than needed.

That same month, the state sued the Corps, seeking to reduce the amount of water headed across the border to Florida. A flurry of hearings last summer failed to resolve the matter. Florida and Alabama also have complaints about the Corps' management of the Chattahoochee River. A 17-year legal battle is wending its way through the federal courts.

But, even if the courts decide to reduce the releases, and the region is deluged with rain, that may only delay the inevitable, some say, because metro Atlanta is outgrowing its water sources.

'Our culture has to change'

An $8 million water plan for metro Atlanta completed in 2003 is based on the generally accepted assumption that this region can remove an average of 705 million gallons of water a day from Lanier and the upper Chattahoochee. But state officials have long thought that the area won't reach that level of water use until 2030.

Metro Atlanta is already more than halfway there, and over the next 25 years another 1.6 million people are expected to share the water.

And the original assumption was based on some major "ifs:" if additional reservoirs are built; if aggressive conservation measures are enacted; if additional water is pumped from Lake Allatoona to the Chattahoochee basin; if metro Atlanta is allowed to use more of the water in Lanier instead of sending it downstream to Alabama and Florida.

Given the current drought, those underlying assumptions are suspect.

Crisp now estimates metro Atlanta could reach its water limit as early as 2018, assuming continued growth in population.

"Our culture has to change," said Crisp, who lives on Allatoona, which has dropped to levels not often seen at this time of year. "We have been a water-rich region all of our lives, never having to worry about water. ... The attention that is paid to water goes away as soon as we start having rain again.

"We're going to have another drought after this one," he said. "When we can't guess, but we can be assured we'll have another drought that's actually worse than this one. ... With that in mind, our planners have to start looking at this in terms of how many more families, how many more businesses, how many more gallons of water can we allocate out of the Chattahoochee River."

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By the way, I used to live in metro Atlanta (Marietta, or "May-retta", yeah, near the "Big Chicken") and worked downtown at Georgia State University. I still can't figure out how they did the intersection of I-85 and the Perimeter near the Fulton County-Gwinnett County line. They were constructing it when I left in 1984 and I have not been back to that part of the metro area since then.

The picture of the "Big Chicken" is from Wikipedia.

"Reservoirs are great places to spread out our water so it can dry." -- Lee Wilson, consulting hydrologist, Santa Fe, NM