Fresh Loaf

Charles Bethea, a former CL intern, has a piece in this week’s New Yorker about a Norcross man who created a Barack Obama Gmail account on a whim and has since been inundated with criticisms, compliments and Russian spam mail addressed to the Presidential hopeful. Go here to check it out.

Bethea is an associate editor at Outside’s Go. He’s also the son of Sally Bethea, executive director of the Atlanta-based Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.

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CEO COMMODE: DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones signs the retrofit ordinance as the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper’s Sally Bethea, Georgia Conservancy’s Shana Udvardy, and Francis Kung’u of the DeKalb Department of Watershed Management look on. In the foreground is Jones’ prized brontosaurus tooth/low-flow shower head.

Nothing says progress like toilet legislation. After months of rewrites, negotiations and deferments, the DeKalb County Commission finally approved a controversial ordinance — one DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones calls the first in the state — that would require homeowners in the county to retrofit antiquated plumbing fixtures before they receive water service. The commission approved the ordinance Feb. 26, and Jones signed it this afternoon. If all pre-1993 plumbing fixtures in DeKalb are retrofit, Jones said, 6 million gallons of water per day could be conserved.

The Realtor industry attacked the measure, known as the Retro Plumbing Fixtures Act, when it was first introduced by Jones in November, because it placed the burden of retrofit compliance on their shoulders. With the rewritten and approved ordinance, it is now the homebuyer’s responsibility to replace fixtures. About 165,000 homes will be affected by the ordinance. If your home was built after 1993, you have nothing to worry about, as the law already requires that all homes built after this date be outfitted with low-flow fixtures. The ordinance takes effect June 1, 2008, for residential properties. Commercial properties have until Jan. 1, 2009, to comply with the measure.

Properties exempt from the ordinance include:

• Properties advertised for foreclosure

• Homes that are slated to be torn down after purchase

• Homes that are conveyed between spouses and children, either by sale or through wills

• Homes in which, because of historic or architectural limitations, retrofitting would cost more than $1,000 per toilet. For commercial properties, the limit is $2,000 per toilet.

(more…)

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What’s bound to happen to the state’s first-ever comprehensive water plan? Even though both the state House and Senate Environment and Natural Resources committees have met, it’s still too early to tell.

State Environmental Protection Director Carol Couch, appearing before Senate and House environment committees last night and this morning, respectively, worked to dispel the “myths” about the water plan. This wasn’t a “water grab” by metro Atlanta, she said, but an effort to “[create] a level playing field.” The 25-member councils in each water-planning district were not, as Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority Executive Director Chris Clarke put it, “water czars.” The councils would merely act as liaisons between the state and municipalities. And the plan, as Couch, Clarke, and many members of the Legislature have said, is not a “lock box,” but a “living document” that is subject to tinkering and adjustment.

The environmental community isn’t sold on the idea, and, frankly, wouldn’t mind if the plan’s rubber teeth morphed into fangs. Gil Rogers of the Southern Environmental Law Center spoke at both hearings on behalf of the Georgia Water Coalition and outlined the vagaries of the three-year effort. He says the plan’s language is lax — too many sentences include “should” rather than “shall.” Some river basins, as outlined in the plan, travel through several proposed districts. The Chattahoochee basin, for example, is divided by three. If disputes between districts arise, how would they be resolved? How the plan addresses such a concern is “anemic” at best, Rogers says

The business community loves the product of the three-year effort that, according to EPD’s Couch, included a strong amount of public input. Name a business interest or organization that banks on an ample water supply — home builders, industry, agribusiness, chambers of commerce — and they stood before the committees to give their blessing. And as one environmentalist put it after last night’s two-hour meeting, “Funny how the people who got us into all this mess are the ones saying they love [the plan].” Missing from those expressions of adoration: Utility companies such as Southern Co., which according to the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, gobble up a healthy portion of the state’s water.

The Senate committee voted unanimously in favor of a resolution supporting the plan. The House committee delayed a vote but may hold one at its next meeting, Thursday morning at 8:30. Word around the Gold Dome today is that Senate Republicans have concerns over the 11 water-planning districts presented to them. The regions are decided on county lines, not river basins, as environmentalists, scientists and many others have urged. There are also mumblings about a push for criteria regarding interbasin transfers — the second most widely criticized aspect of the plan and the one that worries downstream communities the most — be written into law. But with the issue’s urgency, such a move may not even budge.

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