Water Crises on the Rise in North America
aging infrastructure, climate change, sustainability, water October 19th, 2007
The Southeast United States is facing major water issues after a 16 month drought. The drought monitor map to the right provides a picture of the problem and for other areas of the country.
The Atlanta water crisis has reached an impact point, with less than 120 days of drinking water left. The Atlanta Chamber of Commerce has indicated that the crisis is the number one economic threat for the region as a whole.
Atlanta has tried for years to offset the crisis by creating a larger reservoir network, but progress has been halted by lawsuits from neighboring states. Atlanta isn’t alone in the water wars in the region as North and South Carolina have a suit that’s now being deliberated by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Climate change and aging infrastructure are to blame for the latest woes, but it’s been a crisis in the waiting for years. An excellent feature on the coming crisis appeared in U.S. News and World Report in August 2002. At that point it was projected that hundreds of billions would need to be spent to fix the problems.
Water quantity and quality are huge environmental issues going forward, begging for better infrastructure and monitoring systems.
Posts
October 19th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
The real blame is the rampant and uncontrolled growth in the region. And the poor management of the resources during the growth. Also, people need to cut back and realize water is a finite resource, even in “good times”. Especially in areas which historically have long periods of drought. In the past they have had droughts just as severe, but the kicker is, not as many people using the rsources as compared to now.
One thing not mentioned. Lake Lanier dam, the Corp has to release “x” amount of water from the reservior each day, no matter what. Why? Mulitple reasons, some, because of certain agreements with the state of Alabama and Florida.
The biggest reason, the Threaten and Endanger Species Act. The Corp was sued in the past by environmental groups. Now they have to make sure they release a certain amount of water each day so as to not harm certain endangered species in Florida.
No matter what the conditions are above the reservior, the water has to flow out of the dam to meet those agreements.
It’s my understand the watershed which feeds Lake Lanier is down to 1-3% of normal flow.
Lake Allatoona is in the same sad state, NW Atlanta. While Lanier is NE Atlanta. Since the early 90’s, when I lived there, the area’s popultion has increase by about 3 million people.
KoS
October 20th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Here’s a good recent article.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071019/D8SCHTI00.html
Also, out of all the bad there is some good. I talked to a few friends. They and others say, fishing in Lake Lanier has never been this good.
And with the lake dropping, many of the features flooded over are being exposed. Here soon, possible, entire towns will be un-submergered for the first time since water swamped over them. It would be neat to walk around in those ole towns.
KoS
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Fortunately, there’s a little bit of rain that might help.
http://www.atlantawatershortage.com/20071022/more-rain-coming-but-how-much/
The hope is that even if Atlanta pulls out of this without major incident, they’ll have learned their lesson and start employing some real solutions.