Pressure for water

With only about half the normal rainfall so far this year, Georgia and parts of Tennessee and Alabama are restricting water use this summer amid one of the worst droughts on record in the South.

Scattered thunderstorms this week helped replenish parched lawns and fields, but the region’s 15.5-inch rainfall deficit so far this year has drawn down many lakes and aquifers and renewed interstate fights over water supplies.

“The rains this week have helped green up some people’s yards, but the conditions are so dry that there hasn’t been much runoff,” said David Bowling, manager of TVA’s river forecast center. “Our reservoirs remain about 65 percent of their normal level and this remains one of the worst droughts in history.” With the nation’s fifth-biggest river running through it, Chattanooga water supplies remain abundant even amid the shortage of rain and lowered reservoir levels. The biggest water utilities in the region — the privately owned Tennessee-American Water Co. and the publicly owned Eastside Utility District — tap the Tennessee River for their water and pump only a fraction of what they could from the river. “We’re very blessed in Chattanooga to have the Tennessee River as an abundant source of water,” Tennessee-American spokeswoman Kim Dalton said.

Most of Georgia and Alabama and 40 other water systems in Tennessee are not as fortunate this summer and are having to limit water usage by their customers. So far, however, no water utilities have applied to get water from the Tennessee River through interbasin water transfers, according to state and TVA authorities that help regulate such transfers.

Instead, drought-impaired water systems are urging some type of conservation by their customers because of potential drought-related supply problems.

Among Georgia’s 159 counties, 104 are classified by the state climatologist as having “extreme drought conditions” this year. The entire state adopted outdoor watering restrictions in April to allow sprinklers to operate only every other day during evening and morning hours.

In neighboring Alabama, where some utilities also are pushing water conservation, Gov. Bob Riley this week blasted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for not releasing enough water from Allatoona reservoir in Georgia to help provide water in Alabama. Mr. Riley said the corps’ retention of water in the Allatoona lake “has imperiled Alabama’s public water supply, water quality and power grid” and threatened costly business closings.

Alabama and Georgia have been squabbling over limited water supplies for years, but this year’s drought has intensified the interstate battle. The growth of Atlanta and severity of the drought have begun to create water shortages unusual in the Southeast, where more than 50 inches of rain falls in most years, water experts say.

WATER PRESSURE

BUILDS

“As Atlanta continues to grow and the demand for water increases, there are going to be a lot more pressures on this resource, especially during droughts like we are having this year,” said Dr. David Feldman, a political science professor and associate at the energy, environment and resource center at the University of Tennessee.

Dr. Feldman helped Tennessee draft its interbasin transfer law in 2000 to regulate how much water is moved from one watershed to another. Tennessee adopted the permit requirement two years after Atlanta planner Harry West talked of sticking “a big straw in the Tennessee to bring some water to Atlanta.”

Lawmakers, galvanized with visions of the Colorado River sucked dry by pipelines to California and other states, drafted a new permitting law called the Interbasin Water Transfer Act.

Just six months after the law was passed, Mr. West retired and Atlanta Regional Commission authorities said Thursday that metro Atlanta has no plans to try to tap the Tennessee River for more water.

The commission projects water demand in the Atlanta region will nearly double by 2030 from a population gain of nearly 50 percent. But Pat Stephens, chief of environmental planning for the Atlanta Regional Commission and head of water planning for the Metro North Georgia Planning District, said the Atlanta area plans to rely upon conservation and efficiency from its own water resources to meet that growth.

“We have absolutely no plans for any interbasin water transfers from outside of our district, and we are not going to try to get any water from the Tennessee River,” Ms. Stephens said. “In fact, we are prevented from doing so by law.”

GOING WITH THE FLOW

Tennessee River regulators say their concern is not that the river might dry up, but that too much water withdrawn and not returned could inhibit the river’s ability to clean itself and continue to provide ample resources for drinking, recreation, industrial needs and power production.

“Most people look at the Tennessee River as water-rich, and in most years it is,” said Gene Gibson, manager of water supply for TVA. “But in a drought year like this one, you don’t have a surplus of water. And if you take water out of one part of the river, the impact is often felt by others hundreds of miles upstream.”

Most of the water withdrawn from the Tennessee River for drinking supplies, irrigation and industrial use returns to the river after municipal sewage or septic tank cleanup. But in the seven-year history of the permit program, Tennessee has issued seven permits for water transfers to other watersheds.

Collectively, the permits allow only 9.4 million gallons of water a day to be transferred from one watershed to another, a fraction of the 11.7 billion gallons of water that are flowing each day in the Tennessee River through Chattanooga.

“So far, these permits have involved only a negligible amount of water,” Dr. Feldman said. “But eventually, they could open the way for a significant amount of water to move from one river to another.”

EASTSIDE TRANSFERS

The permit granting the largest amount so far has been to the Eastside Utility District. The Ooltewah water system draws all of its water from Chickamauga Lake but is allowed to sell up to 5 million gallons of water a day in southern Bradley County and parts of North Georgia in the Conasauga River watershed. Don Stafford, Eastside’s general manager, said he expects in coming years Eastside will need to expand its permit to serve more of its customers and wholesale buyers in the growing parts of the Conasauga River area.

“We think that will be important to serve this area, but politically I don’t know what will happen,” he said.

The Tennessee Valley Authority also has begun regulating interbasin water transfers from the Tennessee River through its navigation permits, Mr. Gibson said.

In the meantime, weather forecasters said it will take several major rainstorms to end the Southern drought.

“Much of our summer rain in Georgia comes from tropical storms or hurricanes,” said Pam Knox, assistant state climatologist at the University of Georgia. “We don’t want winds or hurricanes, but we sure could use the rain.”

E-mail Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com E-mail Pam Sohn at psohn@timesfreepress.com

WATER TIPS

There are simple things residents can do that can collectively make a difference in the supply of fresh water, such as:

Fix all leaky plumbing fixtures, including outdoor hoses.

Install low-flush toilets, or put a one-liter water bottle in the toilet tank.

Install sink faucets with aerators, motion sensors or automatic shut-offs.

Install low-flow shower heads.

Run washing machines and dishwashers only with full loads.

Buy appliances with water conservation features.

Water lawns and gardens sparingly in the morning or evening to prevent excessive evaporation.

Landscape with native plants, shrubs and trees. They are adapted to periods of drought and may require less water than non-native ornamentals.

Source: http://tennessee.gov/environment/ea/eo/eo_water.shtml