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| | Issue #19.12 :: 10/16/2007 - 10/22/2007 | Georgia drought
| BY ANGEL CLEARY
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AUGUSTA, GA. / COLUMBIA COUNTY, GA. - Drought levels are the worst they’ve ever been, with 61 counties in North Georgia being put on mandatory watering bans and facing potential water rationing in the upcoming months. Boats lie useless and looking pitiful in the crusty LakeThurmond mud.
Billy Clayton, Columbia County water utilities director, says Columbia County just barely missed being put in that category.
“We came real close to being in that arena,” he said at the county’s Management and Financial Services meeting. Lincoln County was included in the level IV drought but they withdraw water from the lake. Other counties like McDuffie also withdraw lake water.
“Honestly, we’ve been in good shape,” he said. “But this is right at our back door.”
Roby Seymour, Lincoln County water department director, said his county was considered level IV drought because they depend on four deep wells, which they have had to cut back by about 20 percent.
“We have had to cut back on ground wells because of the water table dropping,” said Seymour. “We experienced some air getting in our system, but the cut back has helped.”
Lincoln County buys about 50 percent of its water from the city of Lincolnton with an intergovernmental agreement. Since the county cut back on well water, it began purchasing the rest from the city. The city pumps about 630,000 gallons of water per day. Their permit from the EPD allows them only that much. If the water table levels drop further, they will exceed that limit as Lincoln County needs to purchase more water.
“We already go over the limit about two or three times a month,” says Water Utilities Superintendent Stanley Parton. For this reason, he said, the county applied and is waiting on EPD to approve an increase of up to two million gallons per day. With current conditions, he may have to wait even longer.
It’s this kind of situation the Georgia Assembly wanted to avoid when, in 2004, they voted to come up with a statewide Water Management Plan. The new plan will require all watershed regions to come up with a map, out to 50 years, for water use.
“It’s a paradigm shift,” said Nap Caldwell, water planning and policy advisor with the Environmental Protection Division. “The state has never, on the front end of the process, said, ‘Here are the sustainable quantities of this resource.’” That means the responsibility will fall upon the user trying to obtain a permit to make sure the water falls within the water plan guidelines.
“Before, if someone wanted to withdraw water, they would just come to the EPD and ask for it,” he said. Drought level IV didn’t even exist until four years ago when the General Assembly and the Department of Natural Resources approved the Georgia Drought Management Plan. The drought plan goes into effect during extreme drought conditions to buy some time until it rains. That doesn’t seem likely. The winter season is typically dry. The Army Corps of Engineers estimates that, by December, if current weather conditions continue, Lake Thurmond will be about 315 feet above sea level, dropping more than a foot per month.
Clayton says he’s seen worse.
“This isn’t the lowest water levels I have ever seen,” he said at the Columbia County meeting. “But we should start talking about it now and get people used the idea that we could be next. We will need to see the winter rains in order to carry on.” | |
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