Representatives from Georgia, Florida and Alabama regularly get to together on a conference call with the Corps of Engineers to discuss water issues. Thursday’s call produced bad news for Georgia and Lake Lanier.

The Corps of Engineers denied metro Atlanta’s request to minimizewater releases from Lake Lanier for another month. It was good news for Florida and Alabama who opposed the corps’ decision last year to reduce releases from November through April 30.

With the summer months rapidly coming up and the lake still below “normal” levels, it seems a bit premature to start draining the lake just because the past 6 months have had abnormally high water levels.

Read more commentary here.

Post from: Atlanta Water Shortage

Lake Lanier is Too Full, Time to Drain It

60 Day Graph

Post from: Atlanta Water Shortage

Lake Lanier Still Filling Up

Gov. Sonny Perdue, responsible for more than half the appointments, said in a statement that those chosen are “a diverse group of Georgians” who will “focus on water resource issues while also addressing the state’s economic needs.”

But leaders of the Georgia Water Coalition, a statewide group of environmental and civic organizations that advocates for clean water, immediately criticized the absence of environmentalists among the appointees.

Only one of the state’s eight Riverkeepers, Satilla Riverkeeper Gordon Rogers, was named to a council. Rogers will serve on the Suwanne-Satilla regional council in southeast Georgia.

To read the entire article click HERE.

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New Water Councils Appointed for Georgia Water Management

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Lake Lanier 60 Day Graph

Personally I think that many people miss the big picture when it comes to global warming. The earth has been around for 4.5 billion years and has survived just fine with us and will do just fine without us. Throughout the history of the earth there has been a definite movement between warm and cold periods. I think that what is misunderstood most about these temperature changes in the past is that everyone assumes they are extremely gradual.

For example you hear people talk about an ice age that lasts 10,000 years or a warmer period that may last 5,000 years, but in the middle of those overall trends there have been period of 50 years or even 100 years that may completely buck the trend. One of the great examples I read about was when the great conveyor - seen here which is huge underwater river in the ocean more than 40 times as large as all the fresh water rivers on earth, part of it stopped flowing in the not too distant path (maybe 20 to 30,000 years ago). Well the warm water the great conveyor brings up from the equator keeps much of continental Europe and the east coast of the US to some extent much warmer than it would be normally.

When the great ocean conveyor belt stopped flowing, the climate of France took about 3 years to be plunged into extremely cold weather and much of Europe experienced the same conditions. Many scientists are saying that now because of the melting of the north pole ice, the extra fresh water may serve to disrupt or partially half the great conveyor - which has been theorized adds close to 10-15 degrees of warmth to the areas it passes through.

Here is the direct quote from this article that I found particularly enlightening:

For early humans living in Europe 30,000 years ago - when the cave paintings in France were produced - the weather would be pretty much like it is today for well over a thousand years, giving people a chance to build culture to the point where they could produce art and reach across large territories.

And then a particularly hard winter would hit.

The spring would come late, and summer would never seem to really arrive, with the winter snows appearing as early as September. The next winter would be brutally cold, and the next spring didn’t happen at all, with above-freezing temperatures only being reached for a few days during August and the snow never completely melting. After that, the summer never returned: for 1500 years the snow simply accumulated and accumulated, deeper and deeper, as the continent came to be covered with glaciers and humans either fled or died out. (Neanderthals, who dominated Europe until the end of these cycles, appear to have been better adapted to cold weather than Homo sapiens.)

So is Global Warming a bit of red herring, when we really should be worried about Global Cooling?

Post from: Atlanta Water Shortage

Is Global Warming Something We Can Prevent?

The weather has gone cold and dry and looks to be that way for the next 5-6 days, but long terms it’s anyone’s guess if the more normal winter weather returns w/ increased rainfall. December was extremely wet and helped rebuild Lake Lanier quite significantly. However, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division says the ban on all outdoor watering won’t be changed for communities that depend on Lake Lanier for their water until the lake returns to normal.

“It actually takes four months of all drought indicators to be normal before we can move out of a proscribed drought level.”

So it might be quite a while before the drought is officially over.

Post from: Atlanta Water Shortage

Even With all the Rain the Drought Isn’t Over

The administration recently began construction on a $14 million dollar “Go Fish Georgia Center,” featuring a fish hatchery, visitor’s center, and public fishing ponds about 12 miles from Mr. Perdue’s hometown of Bonaire. The 15,000 square-foot building will feature interactive exhibits, including fishing simulators where visitors in a fake boat can struggle against computer controlled fish.

This sounds like quite a controversial plan given the timing of this - seems to me that it would take quite a bit for Georgia to become the fishing capital of the US. Perdue is quoted as saying that, “even if lakes stay low that will make it easier to get the fish.” Sonny also told reporters, “Would you rather catch a big fish in your bathtub, or in your swimming pool?”

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Sonny Perdue Wants to “Go Fish”

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Is the Georgia Drought Ending?

Interactive Project Map

Post from: Atlanta Water Shortage

Atlanta Water Projects

The relentless drought that first crept into metro Atlanta more than two and a half years ago has many victims, from landscapers to fishing guides. None show more visible scars than Lanier.

Last year, the lake’s red clay-ringed shoreline made national news, along with dire warnings that the South’s capital city could run out of water. Lanier is out of the spotlight this year, but not much better off.

This last comment seems to echo many of the posters here, Lake Lanier seems very much out of the spotlight this year and receives very little attention.

Post from: Atlanta Water Shortage

Even with the Recovery “Lake Lanier Remains Perilously Low”