Posted on 11/20/2007 7:11:43 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
Cumming plans to start pulling tons of silt and soil from the bottom of Lake Lanier so it can keep supplying water to 200,000 homes and businesses in Forsyth County.
The complicated process of dredging the lake will start next week and will cost the city about $1 million, said Jonathon Heard, Cumming's director of utilities.
"We have an emergency plan, and this was the worst-case scenario," Heard said. "But the city has planned well, is ahead of the curve and will stay ahead of the curve."
This is the second emergency measure taken by Cumming, which sits on Lake Lanier, as water levels have neared and exceeded an all-time low.
About a month and a half ago, the city spent $250,000 extending a water withdrawal pipe out farther into the middle of the lake to capture the 16 million gallons of water that Cumming's customers use on an average day, Heard said.
That pipe is now exposed at the ever-expanding shore line, he said.
The next step, Heard said, will be to bring in a barge on Monday and begin the two- to four-week process of dredging the lake to 1,030 feet above sea level, or 10 feet deeper than its current bottom.
Crews will pull several thousand cubic yards of silt and soil from the lake bottom, put them on a second barge and take them to shore, where they will be drained, dried and put on dump trucks, Heard said. A local farm has agreed to take the dredged materials, he said.
By dredging, the city can lower the lake bottom at its intake to 1,030 feet, down from 1,040, and build a channel into deeper areas of the lake, Heard said.
He said officials with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have said the water levels at Lake Lanier could be at 1,035 by the end of this year or early next year.
At 9 p.m. Monday, the lake level had fallen to 1,052.64 feet, the lowest level since the Chattahoochee River was dammed up and the lake was filled almost 50 years ago, according to the corps.
Heard said the city has yet another contingency plan, if the drought persists and lake levels keep dropping.
That would involve floating a barge and using high-pressure pumps to bring low-lying water to the city's plant, he said.
Gerald Blackburn, Cumming's city manager, said the city has funds set aside for emergencies that should cover all the current costs.
"We'll do whatever we have to," he said.
"If we don't have enough money, we'll borrow the money."
When I read the headline I thought it was looking for bodies...
Same here.
Hopefully we will get rain Thursday. Our lake, Clark’s Hill is very low also.We need rain badly.
Good Luck.
That was my immediate reaction. Unfortunately, the Brotherhood of Bad Headline Writers is NOT on strike.
As per FR posting guidelines I took the headline exactly as it was written. Maybe the drop in advertising revenue caused the AJC to lay off its creative writers.
If you lived in this area you would know exactly what the headline means. We are in deep trouble.
Have they cut the water off to that clown that was using hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a month??
lol....There’s nothing about that headline that’s right.
Bad writing and bad editing.
Poorly-written headline. I thought “mass murder.”
A better, much more cost effective solution would have been to build new reservoirs before this water issue reached "crisis" proportions. Atlanta has known about the coming water shortage for at least 25 years, yet the Atlanta Regional Planning Commission sat back, collected their checks and did nothing. Ditto the state, county and local gubmints.
Folks in Atlanta should be outraged, but not at the Corps of Engineers. They are doing what everyone agreed to in 1957 before Lake Lanier was completed. Similarly, the citizens of the Atlanta region should not be outraged at the oyster fishermen in Apalachicola or the citizens of Alabama who also need the water from the Chattahoochee just as much as folks who live in Atlanta. The outrage should be directed towards elected officials and those who sat on the ARPC for decades and let this happen.
BTW, I flew over Lake Lanier last week and it is nowhere near drying up. Still lots of water left in that lake.
While I agree that ARPC and other leaders could and should have done more, regarding your statement that:
“Folks in Atlanta should be outraged, but not at the Corps of Engineers. They are doing what everyone agreed to in 1957 before Lake Lanier was completed.”
Do you really think that the situation on the ground hasn’t changed in 50 years, such that modifications to that agreement can’t be contemplated?
Who’s Cumming?
No, that is the essence of my point. The region has indeed changed dramatically in the past 50 years, and particularly in the past 25. I was born and raised about 10 miles from Buford Dam and I saw a lot of that change happen with my own eyes. You simply cannot invite 5+ million people to move to your state without planning for the additional burden on your water supplies, but that is exactly what happened.
Not once will you see any mention of the blunder that the powers that were made in regard to NOT building additional reservoirs to keep up with demand. It's not the Corps of Engineer's fault here. It's the folks that Georgians elected who failed to plan for future growth.
This whole argument of letting water flow from Buford Dam to keep "endangered mussels" alive is smoke and mirrors to cover for the poor planning of the elected officials.
BTW, what entitles Atlanta and the surrounding 'burbs to that water any more than the folks downstream in Alabama who depend on it for drinking water and power generation or the oyster farmers in Apalachicola who depend on it for their very livelihoods?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.