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Georgia Governor declares state of emergency due to drought
Rhonda Cook, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gov. Sonny Perdue declared a state of emergency in most of Georgia on Saturday, and called on President Bush to recognize that the historic drought had created a disaster for 85 counties.
In a defiant plea Saturday at Lake Lanier, Perdue asked Bush to issue a federal disaster designation that would:
…The governor, lieutenant governor, two congressmen and several legislators and state officials gathered at the top of a trio of now-landlocked boat ramps at Lake Lanier to deride the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife for “putting mussels in front of people.”
They also accused the federal agencies of endangering one of the country’s most populated areas, which is seeing its drinking water disappear down the Chattahoochee River for the Gulf of Mexico.
Perdue’s state of emergency declaration and request of a federal disaster declaration are the latest tactics in the escalating war between Georgia and the federal government over how much water can be released from Lake Lanier.
(20 October 2007)
Drought-stricken Georgia says it will sue over water
CNN
The state of Georgia, stricken by months of drought, confirmed Friday that it will sue the Army Corps of Engineers.
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue had said Wednesday the state would seek an injunction forcing the Corps to stem the flow of water from Lake Lanier, Atlanta’s primary water source.
The Corps administers the lake, which supplies most of the water to Georgia’s capital and feeds the Chattahoochee River, which winds through three states.
Rainfall in the area is about 15 inches below normal for the year.
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said, “This is dire, severe, extreme drought.”
(19 October 2007)
Water wars hit federal level
Doug Abrahms, Montgomery Advertiser (Alabama)
Alabama filed a federal complaint against the Army Corps of Engineers as the state’s long-running water war with Georgia heats up again.
“The Corps has a longstanding pattern of favoring Georgia over Alabama in its operations at Lake Allatoona, and the Corps’ actions have only gotten worse during the unprecedented drought we are experiencing,” Alabama Attorney General Troy King said Thursday.
King filed a complaint in federal court in Birmingham on Tuesday that challenges the Corps’ decision this month to cut back on water releases from Lake Allatoona. King said that would harm Alabama’s hydropower generation and navigation on the Alabama River.
The action was part of a lawsuit Alabama filed against the Corps in 1990. Earlier this year, mediation talks between Alabama and Georgia failed.
King also said the Corps ignored its operating guidelines by holding back water that should have flowed to Alabama this year. He said a metro Atlanta water district continues to exceed its withdrawals from the lake.
…While some critics have framed the debate as a choice between people and mussels, the reality is that businesses, consumers and the ecosystem rely on water flows from Lake Allatoona, said Gil Rogers, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center.
He also said that Georgia could be taking more steps to conserve water.
“The army Corps has certainly been the punching bag,” Rogers said. “I don’t think the Corps deserve all the blame for what it’s doing in Alabama and Georgia.”
Riley agreed that Georgia should have done much more to conserve water.
“Atlanta can’t spend all summer during a drought watering their lawns and flowers and then expect someone else to bail them out,” he said. “If Atlanta had done what Birmingham did in June, then Atlanta’s problem today would be much less severe.”
(19 October 2007)
The Future Is Drying Up
Jon Gertner, New York times
Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack – the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water – seems to be a more modest worry.
But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers. Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas.
When I met with Chu last summer in Berkeley, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which provides most of the water for Northern California, was at its lowest level in 20 years. Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”
In the Southwest this past summer, the outlook was equally sobering. A catastrophic reduction in the flow of the Colorado River – which mostly consists of snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains – has always served as a kind of thought experiment for water engineers, a risk situation from the outer edge of their practical imaginations. Some 30 million people depend on that water. A greatly reduced river would wreak chaos in seven states: Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. An almost unfathomable legal morass might well result, with farmers suing the federal government; cities suing cities; states suing states…
(21 October 2007)
Looks like the water wars have begun; see the articles above. -BA
