Every person who moves to this region will place a greater strain on our already strained water resources, both supply and quality. There are certain activities well within our reach to conserve our water supply and improve its quality. Many of these are unpopular for a variety of reasons (economic, mostly), but they are at least proven to work, and the technology is there. There are activities that are out of our control, however, that will impact greatly how we allocate our water resources. The federal courts (opens AJC.com – free subscription required) will be key in deciding how much water we can draw from our surface water sources. Also, regulatory barriers make it difficult to “build” new water resources like reservoirs (opens AJC.com – free subscription required</em ) and economic barriers make it difficult to fully pursue new technologies like desalination. Without water, the typical planning conversations of how best to allocate growth and other infrastructure-related resources will be entirely different in a couple of decades. We won’t be talking about what to do with all our growth, we’ll be asking what happened to it.
Can we conserve enough water to meet the needs of future generations? How will we develop new sources of water?
Tags: atlanta, conservation, courts, Environment, future, region, resources, Technology, water
November 6, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Voluntary efforts are all well and good, and should be strongly and persistently advocated, both now and once the current crisis passes (should it pass). But all indications are that these won’t be enough. I believe we should look to legislation that will enforce some level of conservation while providing the tools necessary to sustain conservation.
I would propose instituting a residential “water-hog” rate in the city of Atlanta. Here’s how it would work:
First, find out how much water is typically used by the top five or 10 percent of residential water users. Use this data to determine a usage amount over which the “water-hog” rate would kick in. The rate would be, say, double or triple the normal rate.
Then, use the revenue collected by the “water-hog” charge to retrofit lower income housing with low flow fixtures.
Those people using the most water would have an incentive to conserve, and people in lower income homes would have the fixtures provided and installed at no charge to them, and they would save money going forward. I have more information about this if anyone is interested.
November 6, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Sam Bass,
What you describe sounds very much like what some counties in the metro area are already doing. It’s called “tiered pricing.” It’s helped, from what I understand. But it’s obvious that more needs to be done. I like the idea of using these revenues to fund retrofitting lower income housing a lot. Those are the residences that are unfortunately least likely to get upgraded with expensive new low-flow appliances and fixtures. neat ideas man!
November 19, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Add these truths up:
Desal produces horribly toxic by-products and resevoirs just submerge land and eco-systems. Renown economists have warned us that Atlanta’s economy is too dependent on growth. Our growth rate is unsustainable when we look at available natural resources.
And you get a simple finality:
Atlanta’s growth needs to be contrained (before the market does it for us, in a very harmful way).
January 2, 2008 at 6:26 pm
We need to start doing a better job of recycling our water. There are many ways to do this, from cleaning our wastewater to the point that it’s potable to instituting gray water systems that reuse water from sinks and shower drains for things like toilets.
How about mandating collection of rainwater from rooftops of new (and newly-roofed) buildings and using that as part of a grey water system? In addition to tiered pricing that could save a lot of water.
Another idea is to make the outdoor watering bans and restrictions premanent. If you want a nicely manicured property, seed it with plants that can survive lean years like many folks do out west.
Some of the biggest water users are power plants, which require water to stay cool. If it became more expensive for Georgia homes and businesses to use so much power then people would be much better about turning off the lights. Then less water would be needed to cool off the power plants, a lot of which is lost to evaporation.
Farmers could save a ton of water by implementing some of the practices that are utilized in more arid areas. It amazes me how often I see an irrigation system humming away under the noon sun, spitting out water to be evporated. If it ran at night only then all the water would stay in the ground and go to the crops.
Marcus, before we talk about legislating who can and can’t live here, we should try and trim some of the fat. There is a lot of waste that needs to be identified and corrected. Seems to me to be a good place to start.