Ben Preiss
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 Lake Lanier Disappearing After the worst drought in 100 years, Lake Lanier, the main water source for Atlanta’s four million inhabitants, could be bone dry in as little as 90 to 121 days. The Army Corps of Engineers want to end water downstream, causing huge concern for citizens. “We battled them over recreation for a lot of years, but we never thought we’d have to battle them over drinking water,” Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle told AccessNorthGa, adding that if no advances are made by the courts, they “may be in a dangerous scenario within 81 days.” Restaurants aren’t serving patrons water unless specifically asked for it. Lake Lanier normally has 38,000 acres (153.8km²) of water, and 692 miles (1,114 km) shoreline, attracting 7.5 million visitors a year. North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida are also affected in a major crisis. “If Governor Sonny Perdue is successful in stopping the Corps’ efforts water from Georgia lakes could stop flowing to Florida and Alabama,” WSFA TV reported. “The situation it’s creating a lot of tension between the three states which have been locked in an ongoing dispute over how to manage the region’s limited water supply for some time.”  For the better part of 18 months, cloudless blue skies and high temperatures have shriveled crops and bronzed lawns from North Carolina to Alabama, quietly creating what David E. Stooksbury, the state climatologist of Georgia, has dubbed “the Rodney Dangerfield of natural disasters,” a reference to that comedian’s repeated lament that he got “no respect.”
“People pay attention to hurricanes,” Mr. Stooksbury said. “They pay attention to tornadoes and earthquakes. But a drought will sneak up on you.”
The situation has gotten so bad that by all of Mr. Stooksbury’s measures — the percentage of moisture in the soil, the flow rate of rivers, inches of rain — this drought has broken every record in Georgia’s history.
Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta, at a news conference last week, begged people in her city to conserve water. “Please, please, please do not use water unnecessarily,” Ms. Franklin said. “This is not a test.”
Others wondered why the calls to conserve came so late.
“I think there’s been an ostrich-head-in-the-sand syndrome that has been growing,” said Mark Crisp, an Atlanta-based consultant with the engineering firm C. H. Guernsey. “Because we seem to have been very, very slow in our actions to deal with an impending crisis.”
(nytimes)References: ajc, nytimes 2 Comments: on Global Warming Becoming Real |
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