How will we manage Georgia’s growing demand for water?

The city of Griffin, Ga. — just 40 miles south of Atlanta — was down to its last two months of water. After that, the taps would run dry. As the Georgia National Guard made plans to haul water tankers to the beleaguered city, county officials hit the road, meeting with state legislators and begging for help.

It wasn’t a hurricane or fire or flood that had emergency managers scrambling to keep the water flowing that summer of 2000. It was drought. Prolonged drought had lowered water levels in the Flint River, the city’s primary water source, and now the backup water source — the Heads Creek Reservoir — was nearly drained.

Statewide, Georgia was drying up. Farmers were losing crops, strict outdoor watering bans were in effect, and many businesses — landscapers, textile manufacturers, golf courses, poultry processors, to name a few — had to shut down, drop shifts or take other measures to save water.

“Up until the recent drought, Georgia had no problem ensuring more than enough water for everyone,” said Mel Garber, UGA Cooperative Extension director of strategic initiatives and a representative on the statewide water planning committee. “This was the first time we faced the limits of that natural resource. Now we have to find a way to manage it.”

The state’s abundant rainfall, which rivals tropical locales at 50 to 60 inches annually, always had been enough to fill rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers, and keep Georgians well supplied with water. But now the drought was focusing attention on water resources and whether the state would be able to meet future demands for them.

During the past two decades Georgia has had two droughts of record — in the Before Wells Run late 80s and from 1998 to 2002 — plus a 100-year and 500-year flood. These extremes — drought and flood — affect the state’s ability to address water issues, said Jim Kundell, director of the environmental policy program at UGA’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government and science advisor to the Georgia General Assembly.

Then there’s the matter of geology combined with growth.

“It’s a mismatch between where the water is most plentiful and where the people are most plentiful,” Kundell said.

Georgia’s population has increased by more than 25 percent since the 1990s. Most of that growth has occurred in the piedmont region — south of the mountains and north of a line that connects Columbus to Augusta and includes Atlanta. The piedmont gets most of its water from rivers and reservoirs.

“Since many rivers start in north Georgia, they aren’t very big as they flow through the piedmont,” Kundell said. “Plus the bedrock doesn’t form extensive aquifers like we have in the coastal plain, so we have limited surface storage and less ground water in the piedmont where most of the people are located.”

And more people means that the pieces of Georgia’s water pie will have to be sliced carefully to ensure equitable access.

“Looking forward over the next 10 to 20 years, water management may be the defining issue for economic development in the state,” Garber said.

Crafting a plan

Most people don’t worry about water until they turn on the tap and nothing comes out. But Jim Kundell has been thinking about Georgia’s water issues since 1977 when he first joined the University of Georgia faculty.

Kundell’s first study at UGA focused on the state’s ground water resources — water that accumulates in geological structures underground. During the past 30 years, he has dealt with many of Georgia’s environmental and natural resource issues but water has been a recurring theme.

“Much of our research focuses on water related issues,” Kundell said. “Water resource management is a technical issue area, it’s one that the state has considerable authority to deal with, and it requires frequent legislation.”

In a 1998 publication, Whose Water Is It?, Kundell and co-authors laid out some of the state’s water allocation issues. Among them was a need to fine-tune the permit system that regulates withdrawals of surface and groundwater. The report also outlined concerns of neighboring states over water issues.

“In 2000, we did another report on water planning and why the state needs a comprehensive statewide water plan,” Kundell said. “We surveyed all 50 states to find what they were doing in the area of water planning. At that time, eight states had comprehensive plans and we analyzed them to see what we could glean that would help Georgia develop a comprehensive plan.”

About this time, people around the state began to recognize that demands for water were beginning to outstrip the capacity to manage it. Water constraints were becoming clear in several areas of the state: in coastal areas, in metro Atlanta, and in the Flint River basin. Then came the drought.

These factors together created the momentum that led the Georgia General Assembly to pass legislation in 2004 calling for a comprehensive statewide water plan. The bill created a Water Council to oversee the plan and assigned the Environmental Protection Division (EPD) with the responsibility for drafting a policy that ensures the state’s water needs are met now and in the future.

“We will propose a statewide policy framework to respond to the gaps in our current policies and programs related to specific issues,” said Gail Cowie, policy advisor to the EPD director.

Kundell’s team has been providing EPD with research assistance on policy options that could help Georgia live within its water budget.

“We raised the question, ‘What should Georgia’s water resources be like in 2030?,’” Kundell said. “What will it take to get there? Based on these considerations, what legislation and other policy changes will be needed to manage water in the future?”

The team reviewed laws, regulations, policies, programs and other information in Georgia and in other states and reported their findings to EPD in a series of reports. One report outlined why a statewide plan is necessary. The other reports dealt with key management objectives and explored topics such as water conservation, water reuse, septic tanks, water transfer from one basin to another, reservoirs, aquifer management, and non-point source pollution.

“If we can make better use of the water we have, we’re further ahead,” Kundell said. “To get any more water is going to be costly both financially and politically.”

The reports also raised questions that EPD has taken to technical advisory committees for answers. For example, which conservation measures are most effective? One technical committee reviewed more than 100 different measures and determined which work best and which don’t conserve much water.

Another question had to do with how much water gets back into streams from septic tanks. A model used to calculate water withdrawals and returns to a basin considers that septic systems do not return water. But is that accurate?

“Understanding that is important for developing policy for the long term,” Kundell said.

“If you are in an area that needs more surface water, should you discourage septic systems and encourage public wastewater systems so you can capture that water, treat it and put it back in the system to be used over again?”

Using the background research provided by Kundell’s group and advice from various technical advisory committees, EPD has proposed a series of policy options for review.

Testing the waters

Reactions to management objectives and proposed policy options now are being sought from different audiences across the state — including the public. Faculty from UGA’s Fanning Institute are assisting with this phase of the process.

EPD formed seven basin advisory committees and a statewide advisory committee to give advice on the options, to refine them, to make them more feasible, and to ensure that they adequately reflect the regional diversity of Georgia — in terms of geology, hydrology and economy.

“The basin advisory committees are made up of representatives from local government, industry, agriculture, environmental groups, and all sectors of the state,” said Leigh Askew, water resources specialist at Fanning. “We’re asking these committees, ‘How can your basin work within these policies?’”

In addition, a statewide advisory committee is providing a statewide perspective that complements the regional perspectives from the basin advisory committees.

“One of the things that has really resonated throughout the whole process is one size doesn’t fit all,” Askew said. “The state has diversity economically, population-wise, even in amounts of rainfall and water uses, so those considerations have to be looked at when we are formulating this plan.”

As the Fanning team reviews input from the various groups, they will be looking for trends in policies and proposals across the state. During the next six months, input from the various advisory groups and from the public will help EPD formulate a policy that addresses many of the complex issues associated with this plan.

“I think we’re working through some policy options, some alternatives, and the payback we’re getting is moving us towards a robust framework for the future management of Georgia’s waters,” Cowie said. “We’re just barely beginning to see the pieces of that skeleton come together now.”

High on the list of concerns is the effect of growth, especially uncontrolled growth, on water. How can the state continue to support growth in the face of water constraints? What are the options for areas that are growing but don’t have enough water in the water basin to support that growth?

One tool might be to authorize inter-basin transfers, moving water from one basin to another. Interbasin transfers are already taking place over short distances between adjacent basins. But broadening the practice may have environmental consequences that must be considered, especially if alternatives are viable such as increased conservation and possibly even desalinization of sea water.

An interbasin transfer might have helped resolve Griffin’s water crisis during the drought. But as it turned out, on July 29th — just three weeks before the water would run out — it began to rain, replenishing the Flint River and the local reservoir. However, anxious to avert future water crises, the city built a new 3.5 billion gallon reservoir, which began serving the region in December 2005.

Kathleen Cason

EPD will submit a draft plan to the Water Council in July 2007. The Water Council will submit a revised plan to the General Assembly in 2008.

Tags: Drought, Nature, Water, Winter 2007