National Academy of Science Presentation

National Academy of Science Presentation by the Lake Lanier Association, April 2-3 2009

Presented by Wilton Rooks, Vice President – Technical Programs for the Lake Lanier Association at the Workshop on Water Issues in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River and Alabman-Coosa-Tallaposs (ACF-ACT) River Basins

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute our thoughts on the ACF. Sitting at the top of the Chattahoochee Basin, Lake Lanier is an important piece of the total ACF and I think it is fair to represent that it has suffered the most and the longest during the drought of the last years. It was used as a source for augmenting the flow in the Chattahoochee basin during the basin-wide drought of 2007 resulting in Lake Lanier reaching its lowest level ever. The residents and businesses that depend on the lake for numerous purposes are still suffering from that drawdown. The lake continues to be in Zone 4 while all other water resources on the ACF are over the top of their Conservation Zones. Lake Lanier has some unique factors that should be kept at the forefront of your deliberations. Everyone downstream of Lake Lanier depends on it at some point. Unless its recovery is viewed as a priority by everyone, anyone depending on it in the future will suffer. The Association is not only concerned about the quantity of water in the lake, but the quality of water as well. Through the Adopt-a-Lake program we have 30 volunteers that test the water each month and have done so for many years. We launched a Lake Lanier Water Quality Consortium consisting of the municipal water departments around the lake to share information and work in a coordinated way to keep the quality of water in Lake Lanier at the highest practical level. In the past we have advocated through the courts when necessary, for waste water treatment plant discharges meeting the highest cleanliness achievable. Today, though I want to address an aspect that has not been discussed in public forums Lake Lanier does not exist in isolation. It is affected by decisions that are made throughout the ACF watershed. There is a tendency for us to place the blame for its status solely on the Corps of Engineers Interim Operating Plan. While we often debate many parts of that plan and its several revisions – and will continue to do so – there are other decisions that impact the level of Lake Lanier too. Every decision that is made by municipal, industrial, agricultural and recreation users of the water in the ACF watershed that results in water being wasted or transferred out of the ACF watershed costs Lake Lanier residents and businesses. Let me give you some examples that impact Lake Lanier especially during a drought when it has been the biggest and eventually the only bucket of water around:

• Inter-basin transfers of 90 MGD from the ACF to the Atlantic Ocean on a daily basis.

• Municipalities that do not implement and enforce water conservation

• Water leaks in municipal water works

• Waste water treatment plants that do not use the highest technology requiring more water to dilute their discharges before the next city takes that water as its drinking water source

• Coal-fired and nuclear power plants do not use the latest water cooling technology, wasting water that could be going to downstream users

• Recreational users such as golf courses that have not developed alternative sources of water for irrigation

• Agricultural users that use less efficient irrigation practices than are available.

• Gulf coast barrier island modifications, like Sikes Cut, that result in salt water intrusion requiring ever-higher volumes of fresh water flow to preserve oyster farming

• Primary river alterations, like the Chipola Cut-off that divert millions of gallons of water away from the primary river main flows and reduce the historic inundation of reverine lowlands that have been part of the habit for mussels.

• Dam limitations such as “head limits” that require water releases for structural integrity.

During times when there is plenty of rain, these factors have little discernible affect on Lake Lanier. But during the 2007 drought, Lake Lanier was called upon to augment the flow in the ACF with up to 4,000 cfs – more than 5 times the average daily discharge that it can sustain without major losses in water level and the resultant negative impacts on a huge economic system that supports the lives of many thousands of people in North Georgia..

There are alternative technical approaches to the Corps Operating Plan  that can be more effectively focused on achieving two primary goals:

1. Keeping the maximum storage in the various reservoirs throughout the year – and

2. Meeting any necessary minimum flow requirements on the ACF.

It is past time for a scientific study that will establish what those minimum flow requirements are and that will define methods and procedures for meeting them with all water users focused on making the investments necessary to minimize the water losses from the ACF watershed. We need a culture of water sharing that affects decision making. In the past, our focus has been on how decisions at the top of the basin impacts users further down the basin. But we also need to look at how decisions in the middle and the bottom of the basin affect users at the top. We need a better water paradigm today. We have seen a taste of the future and it scared many of us. This is an important resource depended upon by real people. It is not just an academic issue to be studied with no lasting consequences. You have the opportunity to produce data and insight that will affect the future for millions of people.