Solving Atlanta's Water Woes

Ahmed Ismail

It is about time that the State starts thinking about how Georgia is going to get enough water that will not only handle future growth, but that will also accommodate current Georgia residents. According to creativeloafing, "A federal judge has set a 2012 deadline for Georgia to strike a deal with Alabama and Florida in its 19-year “water war” and be given U.S. Congress’ approval to use the north Georgia lake — or risk seeing its millions of gallons of water be called off limits."

Getting enough money for this sort of project is certainly not an easy task. Neill Herring is a lobbyist for the Sierra Club of Atlanta and he says that "the state’s plan of attack relies too heavily on creating new sources of water and overlooks cost-effective conservation measures."



“There are more extensive and expensive boondoggles in this document that I would have thought anyone would have the nerve to combine into a single parcel of political dynamite,” Herring says. “The beauty of most of these ‘remedies’ is that the facts that they are either unneeded, or won’t work, or both, are not going to be discovered until great wads of public money have been poured down the ratholes they create.”

Heriing thinks the potential cost of the state’s proposal could lessen the interstate highway program, which he thinks is the largest development in Georgia’s history. Unlike that project, however, the additional reservoirs and infrastructure work might receive little, if any, federal funding.

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/freshloaf/2009/11/30/state-pushes-reservoirs-interbasin-transfers-to-solve-metro-atlanta-water-woes/

http://www.atlantawatershortage.com/?p=426

http://jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2009-08-17/story/atlantas_water_woes_not_boon_to_rest_of_georgia_experts_say