In the 1950’s, the federal government built Lake Lanier in North Georgia for hydroelectrical purposes. Metro Atlanta was also allowed to tap into this lake for its water supply, just as a benefit on the side. Atlanta expanded throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s, becoming a mega region of 5 million people. Neither the state of GA or the metro Atlanta government did anything to address the possibility that maybe water wasn’t an infinite resource. Instead, they sat around and continued to draw water from Lake Lanier, more and more each year, with a let’s see what we can get away with before it’s too late mindset and planning model.
Under federal law, a lake which serves several states must be shared equally with each state. A water basin increases more and more the further downstream you get from its origin. Alabama and Florida are both tributary states to Lake Lanier which is in the Chattahoochie River Basin. The Atlanta metropolitan region, which sits at the top of the basin, withdraws more water than any place downstream of this basin. Not only that, but Lake Lanier was given to Atlanta, without it Atlanta would have had to build its own reservoir. While it may make sense for a major lake north of a major metropolitan area have water drawn from it, the complete lack of communication of both the federal government, state of GA, and the Atlanta metropolitan region demonstrate the huge infrastructure planning deficiency that has been in place in the US for the past 50 years.
This problem is almost exactly correlated to the US electric grid. The transmission lines were built a long time ago, and it is well known that 1 single tree falling on 1 line can bring 1/4 of the country into darkness. We’re waiting for the massive problems to occur before we’re willing to address them. For the water situation, we did face a crisis here in the Atlanta region 2 years ago, when Lake Lanier dropped several feet and water restrictions were placed in GA. However, for the state of GA, this still isn’t enough to grab state politicians by the collar and get them to take action.
One obvious thing that could be done is build more reservoirs to store rainwater, instead of letting the water flow into the rivers. What are the political, economical, and practical challenges of undertaking such public works projects. What alternatives are available, and what are the political requirements for all of these ideas? Should this be done now, next year, in 5 years? Should Atlanta’s growth be halted? Will it take a major crisis to bring action?
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