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October 24, 2007
Convenient excuses
by Sylvia S Tognetti
More background on the situation in Atlanta in this NYT article. As I suspected, the release of water for endangered species is a convenient excuse for failure to conserve water, even after a drought has been declared:
With a public anxious over the possibility of running out of water, the corps has not been the only entity to shoulder blame.
On Oct. 1, Stone Mountain Park began to make snow for a winter mountain, hoping to attract children who had not seen the real thing. The mountain was planned during the very wet summer of 2005, and the state and local governments were duly informed, said Christine Parker, a spokeswoman for the park.
The state announced a Level 4 drought response on a Friday and, after park officials reviewed the list of exceptions for businesses, snow-blowing began the following Monday, before much of the public had fully grasped the severity of the situation. After the project was ridiculed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the park shut it down. Ms. Parker said that only then did the park hear from state environmental authorities.
And as I suspected, a cover up for a more complex state of affairs. Via watercrunch - Alabama begs to differ on the amount of water and sees other motives:
Georgia has repeatedly framed its request as a contest between people in the Atlanta area and endangered mussels in Florida. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality the action that Georgia seeks will have dire consequences on people and their livelihoods downstream in Alabama.
Georgia ignores the fact that the Farley Nuclear Plant sits on the banks of the Chattahoochee River and requires cooling water from the Chattahoochee...The lack of adequate cooling water could require a shutdown of the plant, putting the reliability of the electric power grid in the region at risk....
What the State of Georgia is seeking from you is a unilateral transfer of decision-making authority over the water in the federal reservoir at Lake Lanier from federal to Georgia control. that reservoir was built with federal taxpayer dollars for certain congressionally authorized purposes, which did not include the Atlanta area water supply. While Alabama understands the needs of residents in Atlanta, we cannot stand idly by and allow Georgia to take control of the water in that reservoir to the detriment of the people who live and work downstream in Alabama...
...Alabama is not willing to cede unilateral control of waters in the Chattahoochee River Basin to the State of Georgia.
Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at October 24, 2007 9:27 AM
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