Panel: Just conservation ≠water-shortage solution
December 11, 2007 at 3:48 pm by Thomas Wheatley in NewsA whole cadre of big thinkers — from government honchos to water planners to business leaders — convened at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Monday morning to brainstorm about water issues and figure out how to avoid another one years down the line.
“The big issue this year [in the General Assembly] won’t be transportation,” said Sam Olens, chair of the Cobb County Board of Commissioners and the Atlanta Regional Commission. “It’ll be water.”
(Olens, along with Kit Dunlap, another one of Monday’s panelists, serves on the Metropolitan North Georgia Water District committee. Click here to view its 2008 legislative agenda.)
It was a morning of suggestions. Push conservation not as a temporary inconvenience, the panel said, but as a way of life. Urge Congress to reallocate the water supply. Recycle and intensively treat wastewater to be funneled back into the reservoirs, which, oh yeah, we gotta build more of those things. And lastly, somehow convince our fellow citizens outside the region that we’re not the water hogs they perceive us to be.
And while all the participants commended the region on its conservation efforts, they all agreed that simply cutting showers short and not watering our lawns wouldn’t be enough to stave off another crisis. (If I had a bon bon for every time I heard a politician utter “We won’t conserve our way out of this drought,” I’d be a very fat boy.)
Olens said that since residential water use accounts for 55 percent of consumption, that’s where the focus needs to be. Rebate programs, such as those currently available in Cobb County, aren’t enough. He advocated offering tax incentives and credits to residents, and for those programs to be expanded to include other water-gulping appliances and machines. He’s not just talking toilets and showerheads, but dishwashers and clothes washers, as well. Counties need to push for mandatory retrofit ordinances on homes that are being resold, he added, and be prepared to face a barrage of criticism and battles with special interests, much like DeKalb County is doing right now. Apartment owners need a financial incentive to convert shared meters to individual ones so apartment dwellers can realize their actual consumption. And lastly, he said, there needs to be more discussion about actually getting our hands on more water.
“We need to be discussing reservoirs. We need to be discussing the Tennessee River,” Olens said.
And according to an AP story from Monday’s Augusta Chronicle, he likes that Tennessee idea. We could get more growth as well as dip our straw into the bountiful water supply the Volunteer State enjoys. And he’s willing to throw in one choo-choo!
Still, some are holding out hope that tapping into the massive river basin — which has a flow about 15 times greater than the river feeding Atlanta — could help solve Georgia’s water problem.
One metro Atlanta leader says old-fashioned political horse-trading might do the trick.
Atlanta needs water, and Chattanooga wants a high-speed rail line to link the two cities.
“From my perspective, I’m open to a discussion where there’s a win-win,” said Sam Olens, the chairman of the Atlanta Regional Commission. “Chattanooga would potentially receive the rail line it desires, and in return metro Atlanta would have access to excess flow from the river.
“But I want it to be a real win-win, where there’s literally an opportunity for both metro Atlanta and Chattanooga.”
There was little discussion about the region’s growth habits — a longtime Atlanta trademark that many critics say may finally be catching up with us. After all, while our population has been increasing, our water supply’s stayed the same. Everyone agrees that the problems we’re facing are a nasty mix of Mother Nature and our own success. And, unsurprisingly, a lot of folks want to know how we can keep that growth going and ourselves hydrated in the process.
To comment on the district’s water plan, click here. Comments close at the end of business tomorrow, so as they wrote in the press release, “time is of the essence.”
Leave a Reply