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Big growth, big fight over water in Washington
Jonathan Martin, Seattle Times
ROSYLN, Kittitas County – More than two years have gone by, but it still galls Joe Peck that he was ordered to shut off water to the whole city of Roslyn while the owners of the new, supersized homes just out of town got to keep watering their lawns.
The big drought of 2005 was fast drying up the Yakima River, and Roslyn’s water had to be rationed for farms and others downriver. But the wells of the vacation homes are exempt from the law.
“This town was one of those that built Washington state,” said Peck, the town’s water superintendent. “Tell me why, in a drought, those homes faced no restrictions, and we had to bear the brunt of it?”
Roslyn’s situation is at the heart of a brewing water war in the forested Cascade foothills and arid valleys of Kittitas County. A development bonanza is bringing hundreds of new wells here each year, tapping a limited water supply that long ago was fully claimed for agriculture and other uses.
(21 November 2007)
City to dredge Atlanta’s Lake Lanier – needs water
Nancy Badertscher, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cumming plans to start pulling tons of silt and soil from the bottom of Lake Lanier so it can keep supplying water to 200,000 homes and businesses in Forsyth County.
The complicated process of dredging the lake will start next week and will cost the city about $1 million, said Jonathon Heard, Cumming’s director of utilities.
“We have an emergency plan, and this was the worst-case scenario,” Heard said. “But the city has planned well, is ahead of the curve and will stay ahead of the curve.”
(21 November 2007)
Lake Lanier, one of the Atlanta area’s main sources of water, has reached its “lowest point since construction,” descending almost to the dead zone, “a layer low in oxygen and high in organic material – that is, dead and decaying plants and animals.” How well thought out are these plans to dredge the river?
