No Backup, no plan for Atlanta Drought

Saturday, Oct. 20, 2007

No Backup Plan in Atlanta Drought

By AP/GREG BLUESTEIN

Excerpts:

Atlanta) — With the South in the grip of an epic drought and its largest city holding less than a 90-day supply of water, officials are scrambling to deal with the worst-case scenario: What if Atlanta's faucets really do go dry?

So far, no real backup exists. And there are no quick fixes among suggested solutions, which include piping water in from rivers in neighboring states, building more regional reservoirs, setting up a statewide recycling system or even desalinating water from the Atlantic Ocean.

"It's amazing that things have come to this," said Ray Wiedman, owner of an Atlanta landscaper business. "Everybody knew the growth was coming. We haven't had a plan for all the people coming here?"

Gov. Sonny Perdue seems to be pinning his hopes on a two-pronged approach: urging water conservation and reducing water flowing out of federally controlled lakes.

State officials warn that Lake Lanier, a 38,000-acre north Georgia reservoir that supplies more than 3 million residents with water, is already less than three months from depletion. Smaller reservoirs are dropping even lower, forcing local governments to consider rationing.

The Corps, which manages the water in the region, stresses there's no reason to think Atlanta will soon run out of water.

"We're so far away from that, nobody's doing a contingency plan," said Major Daren Payne, the deputy commander of the Corps' Mobile office. "Quite frankly, there's enough water left to last for months. We've got a serious drought, there's no doubt about it, anytime you deplete your entire storage pool and tap into the reserve."

Comment - It's hard to know how to comment on the idea, from a government bureaucrat, that 90 days isn't "soon". This is the government that has no Federal budget in place which was due 3 weeks ago and might come by Christmas?

I think I've argued before here that a "star" shaped communications and decision plan (for example, the nation's National Incident Management plan) is basically unworkable because there simply isn't enough bandwidth at the top to deal with a thousand new issues. They have their hands full with Iraq and the budget, overly-full apparently. How can anyone imagine that this bureaucracy could handle an actual emergency? They can declare martial law and change to no-bid contracts, and after that deal with a few "top" priorities. Everything else will be put on hold, waiting for a response from the top that will never come.