Victory at Lake Lanier!
Winter 2004/05

It took four years, but Nov. 2004 saw GA Supreme Court rule in favor of Sierra Club, Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Lake Lanier Association and Terrence Hughey’s challenge to Gwinnett County's proposed discharge of 40 million gallons of treated sewage per day into Lake Lanier.

The discharge would have equaled the volume of the Chestatee River near Dahlonega, one of two major rivers flowing into the lake.  The Permit would have reversed a 15-year EPD policy prohibiting new discharges into Lake Lanier.

The Court also sided with the environmentalists on the need for additional public notice. Now in Georgia, any entity that wants to add a new discharge to any of Georgia’s lakes and streams must affirmatively prove to the state agency that they are putting in the cleanest water possible based on available technology.

— "Victory at Lake Lanier”  Georgia Sierran, Jan-Feb 2005 http://www.georgia.sierraclub.org

Drink Your Rocket Fuel!
Winter 2004/05

The National Academy of Sciences reports that perchlorate (an ingredient in rocket fuel, firecrackers, & road flares) in drinking water is about 20x higher than the EPA’s proposed guideline of one part per billion — but says it is safe for drinking... The National Resources Defense Council claims the panel was strong-armed into producing results to save the defense industry billions of dollars in cleanup costs in the 35 states... “We’ve never seen such a brazen campaign to pressure the National Academy of Sciences to downplay the hazards of a chemical, but it fits the pattern of this administration manipulating science at the expense of public health,” NRDC said. Bill Walker of the Environmental Working Group said “absurdly high levels” accepted by the Pentagon aren’t safe.

— Maggie Fox, Reuters, 10 Jan. 2005, http://grist.org/cgi—bin/borward.pl?forward_id=3988

Plan B
Fall 2004

Ever since he founded the WorldWatch Institute in 1974, Lester Brown has been preaching doom. He is still doing it but this time with a detailed plan that could save us.

Even as the glaciers melt, the deserts expand, and our aquifers shrink, he has not lost hope. He believes our economy can still be restructured to be part of the environment but the process must begin soon. His data show that resource demands in 1999 already exceeded the world’s capacity by 20%. What action can reverse this trend? A reform like the one that saved India from famine following the monsoon failure in 1965. That reform enabled India to double its wheat harvest in seven years, going from being the world’s largest wheat importer to being self-sufficient in wheat.

The first indicators of trouble will show up, he predicts, as declining aquifers cause reductions in the grain harvest and higher grain prices. Then will come spreading hunger and unrest.

Emerging water shortages rarely hit the headlines because they are treated as local events — rivers drying up, wells going dry, or lakes disappearing. Wells have already gone dry on thousands of farms in the southern Great Plains. In parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas the underground water table has dropped by more than 30 meters (100 feet). In India the water table dropped a meter a year, between 15 and 400 meters over the last three decades. China has already had a decline in grain production and is dipping into stocks.

What is Mr. Lester’s plan? The titles of his chapters provide an outline:

Raising Water Productivity
Raising Land Productivity
Cutting Carbon Emissions in Half
Responding to the Social Challenge

The amazing thing is that he has seen these steps work all over the world.

The book is Plan B: Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.

Water Bills
Winter/Spring 2004

The end of the state legislative session brought last minute victories for the coalition working to save Georgia’s water. Once again the pressure was on to market our water using withdrawal permits, but this was foiled. Another water planning bill that would have allowed interbasin transfers in part of the state died on the final day. A third bill would have permitted major projects to proceed even before the appeals process was finished, but this too was defeated on the last day. And then there was the “mud bill” which would have put small streams in pipes to allow construction on top of the streams ­ again a last minute save. At last the sewers of Atlanta are expected to get sales tax help to pay the cost of long-needed repairs without raising water rates.

Every environmental group in the state, including ACE, poured on the pressure with phone calls, letters and emails to legislators and the governor — and it paid off.

Three local legislators, Sen. Carol Jackson, Sen. Ben Bridges, and Rep. Jeanette Jamieson, got well-deserved public recognition for their good work on these bills, in a presentation jointly sponsored by Action for a Clean Environment, the Soque River Watershed Association, and the Sautee Nacoochee Center.

Bean Creek Report
Winter/Spring 2004

Our collaborative work in the Bean Creek community has come to an end. ACE staffer, Joanne Steele, worked with Caroline Crittenden of the Bean Creek History Project and members of the Friends of Bean Creek for five months testing wells, compiling data, and working with the White County Water Authority, White County Extension Service, and the UGA Agricultural and Environmental Services Lab. Friends of Bean Creek submitted information to the White County Water Authority about the contaminated wells in the community. The Water Authority has $1.5 million in grants pending to provide safe drinking water to the community. Municipal water is their goal.

Unfortunately, controversy erupted over focusing on fundraising to do work in the Bean Creek community. Some folks felt that ACE was using Bean Creek to further our own agenda. It was a difficult situation. Although the field work done was greatly appreciated and praised, the dynamics of fund raising were not.

To settle the matter, the funds raised by our appeal letter were used to pay strictly for the lab costs for water testing, mileage to and from labs, and the staff time used for gathering samples and work done with the head of the UGA Soil and Water Lab. The remaining funds from the appeal were transferred to Friends of Bean Creek for their self-determined goals in the community. ACE general funds covered all other staff time — organizing with residents, attending Friends of Bean Creek meetings, videoing, working on grants, networking and hours arranging for sampling. Grants we submitted to do ongoing environmental education and work in the community have been withdrawn at the request of Friends of Bean Creek’s president, and the Bean Creek History Project. Joanne asked the ACE board to allow her to resign before her contract was up in order to save the further expense of her salary.

The big lesson learned here was to get a Memorandum of Understanding agreement done up front before working in collaboration. Grant deadlines can’t always be met, and it’s more important to have everyone signing on and clear on what the grants require. General conversation is not enough. A signed agreement avoids a lot of hard feelings and heartache.

The good news is the timing of the work done in the community. The data collected through the collaborative effort was enough for the county and regional development folks to go forth with the Federal grants to provide clean drinking water. We all hope those grants come through successfully. The Bean Creek community is organizing and finding its voice. They are looking into pros and cons of seeking 501(c)(3) status. We wish them well.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the Bean Creek Water Project. Your support was critical to timely documentation and action.

— Joanne Steele

Sewage Treatment Change
Fall 2003

More disease-carrying microbes from wastes could contaminate US waterways, lakes and coastlines if the Bush administration proceeds with plans to loosen sewage-treatment requirements. This week (Nov. 4) the US EPA intends to unveil a proposed rule change that would let many communities skip a sewage-treatment step after storms cause an increased flow of wastewater. The public will have 60 days to comment on the proposal.

Many local sewage-treatment plants don’t have the capacity to handle storm-water surges and it would cost billions to make upgrades at these facilities. But the looser rules would lead to more viruses and parasites in water, says Nancy Stoner of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a group that’s pushing for the federal government to help communities boost capacity at the nation’s sewage plants.

— USA Today, Peter Eisler, 03 Nov 2003, www.gristmagazine.com/forward.pl?forward_id=1679.

Water and Wetlands
Fall 2003

The fabled Suwannee River, of all the major American rivers the least polluted and least obstructed, winds down from the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia 235 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. On this river there is only one kind of flood control, the kind that works ­ wetlands. Many of these wetlands are called isolated, but that term means nothing. “Isolated” wetlands store and filter water for the aquifers they flow into, and animals that live elsewhere seek them out to feed and breed in.

The Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (PCS), a phosphate strip-mining company, owns 100,580 acres wrapped on three sides by the Suwannee. Wetlands and streams that feed the Suwannee have been polluted, degraded, or, in many cases, gouged out of the earth by PCS; and now the company plans an 18,166 acre expansion of the mine.

Until January 10, 2003, many of the streams and wetlands on 3,997 acres of the expansion area were protected by the Clean Water Act. Then there was issued a “guidance document” instructing field agents on how not to apply the Clean Water Act. No longer were the Army Corps of Engineers of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to bust parties who filled or fouled “isolated waters” that are non-navigable and “intrastate” (completely in one state) just because migratory birds are present. No definition of “isolated waters” was provided, but the agencies have since proclaimed them to be streams that flow intermittently or dip underground, and wetlands that don’t have obvious connections to larger waters.

The document also ordered agents to seek “headquarters approval” before issuing a citation, thereby dooming enforcement by initiating an endlessly ascending chain reaction of butt-covering permission requests.

With these directives came a proposed rule-making, suggesting that isolated waters don’t count any more and inviting comment on how to define the word “isolated” so as to make the Clean Water Act more palatable to those it inconveniences. If the rule goes through, it could degrade 60 to 80% of the stream miles in the US.

A Supreme Court decision in January, 2001, said that use by migratory birds is no longer grounds for federal protection of intrastate, non-navigable waters. There are plenty of other enforcement standards, such as public use for recreation or use by farmers for irrigation. The guidance and proposed rule-making that now jeopardizes streams and wetlands across America are payback for the polluters who contributed to the Bush campaign: agribusiness, including the logging industry, the construction industry, coal mining companies.

Even Bush’s own Justice Department finds the administration’s guidance documents illegal. Since the Supreme Court decision, 17 lower courts have ruled that isolated wetlands and intermittent and underground streams must be protected under the Clean Water Act, and in the five cases in which conservative courts have supported some or all of the administration’s new, broader interpretation, the Justice Department is vigorously appealing three and holding off on a fourth until a similar case can be decided.

For every wetland acre a company destroys, Florida’s Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) requires it to “create” another. So, according to the state, PCS, and a large element of the general public, there’s no problem. For both isolated and nonisolated wetlands there is supposedly “no net loss.” PCS gets “mitigation” credit from the state for real wetlands it destroys by reshaping its slime pits and planting trees around the edges. These are certainly an aesthetic improvement; but few if any sustain wetland plants and wildlife, purify runoff, or recharge groundwater the way real wetlands do. Only God or a real smart soil scientist can make a real wetland.

Bush’s EPA proposed to redefine “impaired” waters as clean and to preserve the status quo by letting the states ­ which had ignored the TMDL program ­ worry about discharges. Surviving Clean Water Act provisions aren’t being enforced. According to EPA documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the US Public Interest Research Group, nearly 30% of the largest municipal, industrial, and federal facilities were in serious violation of pollution permits at least once between January 2000 and March 2001. The response of the Bush administration was to cut EPA’s enforcement budget.

If all your neighbors were strip miners, you wouldn’t have a better one than PCS. It really does make an effort. While it pollutes the Suwannee, it generally dumps no more than 20% of the limit allowed on its EPA discharge permit. Pollution is way down because the company has voluntarily reduced its use of groundwater by conserving and recycling. PCS has donated land and money to the town of White Springs for a modern sewage-treatment plant, thereby removing one of the last pollution point sources to the upper Suwannee.

Chastising industry for legally destroying wetlands is like chastising your cat for killing rodents and coughing them up under the dinner table. You can do it, but it won’t get you anywhere because that’s the nature of the beast. The nature of government, on the other hand, is different. Chastising the executive branch for emasculating the Clean Water Act might just get you some results ­ especially if you do it with letters to newspapers, on the internet, and, ultimately, with your vote.

— Excerpted from Ted William, “Down Upon the Suwannee,” Mother Jones, Sept/Oct. 2003.

Water and the Assembly
Fall 2003

Neill Herring brought the state’s water supply to our attention when he spoke at North Georgia Tech on Sept. 9. Last year the General Assembly almost passed a bill that would have allowed water permit holders to sell their allotted amount of water, thus making water a commodity rather than a public resource. We can expect another attempt to privatize our water at the next session.

Following is an excerpt from his unpublished manuscript, with his permission.

“C is for Contamination, and additionally stands for Control.

Contamination, in the form of highly mineralized water, was coming from the lower Floridan aquifer up into the upper Floridan at Brunswick, where several pulp and chemical users had been industriously pumping for decades. In Savannah, the big user was then Union Camp Paper Company, now International Paper, which had pumped so much water since 1935 that the cone of depression extended all the way to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean at Hilton Head, South Carolina, where the ocean itself was infiltrating the aquifer with its salt water. This contamination, or these contaminations, since the physics of each differ, pose permanent threats to the use of the aquifer as a source for drinking and industrial process water at the threatened locations.

The discovery of this threat predated its being widely advertised, but it moved from the status of unpredictable problems like seasonal flooding and tropical storms, to that of clear and present danger, in the latter part of the 1990s, coincident with Hilton Head having to take steps to protect its water supplies [22], and The Savannah Group (TSG) proposal to inject surface water into the ground water system. Savannah and Brunswick had long been aware, at the technical and official level, that surface water sources might one day be needed as supplements, even substitutes for ground water. Savannah was even withdrawing water from the Savannah River, for treatment and use in a portion of its municipal water system service area.

Into this long-term resource crisis marched Dr. Cummings, at whose behest only speculation names.

Useful here is a statement by this writer on the subject of my own introduction to Dr. Cummings, through reading a document prepared by the Environmental Protection Division which someone sent to me because I was the lobbyist for the Georgic Chapter of the Sierra Club.

The paper was called Management Principles for Ground Water With Salt-Water Intrusion. [23] I read it sometime in November, 1996. A heavy reader, I gave up television in 1975 because it was interfering with my reading. Catholic in my literary tastes, I will read virtually anything, and have a weakness for lists, of names, of anything. While frequently bored in this pursuit, at times I am amused, occasionally informed, sometimes enlightened. Until I read the document cited at the head of this paragraph, I had never been physically sickened by anything I have read. This paper literally put me in bed. This sort of experience leaves a lasting impression. It was that illness, caused by literary work unique in my reading experience, more than any other stimulus, that has caused me to take up the present work.

Cummings’s ‘modest proposal,’ to deliberately echo that of Jonathan Swift, was something he called a ‘Rational Use’ principle, which he proposed as an alternative to a ‘Sustainable Use’ principle. The aspect of the organization of the document that set me up for such a visceral reaction was its cold-blooded presentation of markets as the sole means for allocating the scarce water resource of the future, as if the only alternative available for the public disposition of the public’s ground water were sale to the highest bidder. But the ‘Rational Use principle derives from well-established economic principles for the management of exhaustible resources.’ This is interpreted to mean that the ‘value of ground water is achieved by continuing to use the resource so long as values obtained from its use exceed costs associated with depletion (or, possibly, ‘early’ depletion) of the resource’ (emphasis in original). [24]

Markets, in their purest and also rawest forms, distribute scarce commodities by means of allocation to the purchaser who has the greatest ‘need’ and the greatest ability to afford the commodity for sale. Superabundance, oversupply, surplus, all relative terms dependent on the existence of scarcity for their meaning, preclude markets. What is readily available to all at little expense needs no allocation, neither markets nor other rationing arrangements. The Floridan aquifer is as abundant a groundwater resource as the earth can offer, and it is a dynamic resource, a part of the hydrologic cycle that recharges and discharges, [25] so like a living organism that the fanciful theory of the earth itself as a superorganism seems almost plausible. The only way this resource can be made marketable is to abolish its abundance; that is precisely what Cummings and his crew are proposing. Creating scarcity would make setting the price of water possible for whoever had control of the resource.

This is what sickened me. That such a proposal could be made at all, even by some high-toned vandal of the right wing think-tank variety is disgusting enough. That an ‘eminent scholar’ in the hire of the Georgia State University should be the source for it is appalling, and that the proposal should be made for and at the request of the state Environmental Protection Division, charged with protection of the resource, is finally and truly sickening. Adding to the quease was another document, a memo to the director of the EPD’s Water Resources Branch from Cummings and Terrebone, 1996, detailing a visit by the pair with the president of TSG and a pair of consulting engineers from the CH2M Hill Company. [26]

In this memo it soon becomes apparent that the October 1 paper was no theoretical exercise: Cummings was talking about actual plans to wreck the Floridan aquifer resource, and TSG hoped to be among the wreckers. An energetic speculator with ambitions for private enrichment at the expense of the general public, even one seeking to use the public’s own assets in this adventure is not unusual. In fact, he is a stock figure in American history and literature, from war profiteers, through railroad promoters, to the education reforms of today.

What is remarkable in this instance is that the state itself hired an academic, in the person of Dr. Cummings, to cook up a theory justifying this pelf, even offering what amounts to a ‘how to’ guide for it. This is some pretty startling stuff, even for the smokestack chasers of Georgia. One would expect a profiteer to handle his own public relations effort, in view of the fact that the actual work in most such schemes is largely limited to that effort anyway. It is certainly amazing to think that the regulator, the person charged by law with protecting the resource, should engage the services of someone to facilitate its calculated destruction.

At his meeting with TSG, Cummings tells the water managers of EPD that TSG advised that EPD faced an ‘uphill public relations battle if they hope to convince the public that the effective ‘depletion’ of an aquifer best serves the public interest.’ [27] TSG wishes to present itself as the savior of the aquifer: by pumping treated surface water into the ground, the overuse of the resource could continue indefinitely, and restoration was merely a matter of paying the bill (to TSG) for aquifer storage and recovery.

Cummings is not the sort of fellow to simply hang around a scene and wait for something to happen. He is active, always on the lookout for new opportunities for the state of Georgia to pay him to invoke the magic of capitalism, in the form of western states water law, or at least water markets, in the abundant water resource of a growing Georgia.

[22] ‘McIntosh Residents Oppose Plan to Pump Altamaha,’ The Brunswick News, Oct. 7, 1997, by Amy Horton, p. 1.

[23] 12 Management Principles for Ground Water with Salt-Water Intrusion: An Analysis of Alternative Policies for Georgia’s Upper Floridan Aquifer, Cummings, Ronald G., Peter Terrebonne and Gabriel Valdez, Water Resources Policy Program, School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, Oct. 1, 1996.

[24] Cummings, et al, op.cit., p. 13.

[25] Wharton, Charles H., The Natural Environments of Georgia, Georgia Geological Survey, Bulletin 114, p. 19.

[26] Cummings, Ron, and Pete Terrebonne to Nolton Johnson, Environmental Protection Division, ‘October 24 Visit with TSG in Savannah, Georgia,’ Oct. 26, 1996.

[27] Ibid., p. 2.”

— Neillherring@earthlink.net

Soque Flood Plain Project
Fall 2003

Harriet Williams, owner of the trailer park on Route 197 south of Clarkesville, has put in many improvements since our last newsletter, including moving the septic system and adding pumps and new piping. With support from St. Mark’s church, she plans to install an education center for the community, and hopes to get permission for a donated trailer to be moved in for that purpose. She is waiting for the Habersham County Commissioners’ meeting on Nov. 17, when her request will be answered.

Bean Creek Project
Fall 2003

The Bean Creek community dates back to the mid-1800s, when freed and former slaves of the first white settlers formed the community in Sautee Valley along the creek. Current residents of the community, their descendants, have been preserving their oral history through the Bean Creek History Project (BCHP) at the Sautee Nacoochee Community Center Museum.

When concerns were expressed about health issues in the community, water samples were drawn from the home of a resident who had fallen gravely ill to see if there was a link. Contamination was high! The Bean Creek History Project has several initiatives going, from oral history preservation to working with Habitat for Humanity addressing affordable decent housing in the community, and more. Action for a Clean Environment was asked to work with the BCHP to address environmental concerns.

Joanne Steele of ACE, along with Caroline Crittenden of BCHP, began taking more water samples from several residences in the community. To date the drinking water sources for 15 homes have tested positive for bacterial contamination. Lead has been detected in 4 wells. Some wells have been shocked, and drinking water from a bottled water company is being provided, through Nacoochee Presbyterian Outreach, for 5 households with alarmingly high levels of contamination. The Bean Creek Missionary Baptist Church and Nacoochee Methodist Church are also in support of efforts to detect and correct environmental health problems. The Sautee Fire Dept. is an immediate source for folks to get clean water in their own containers. This is collaborative community work at its best. 

With the encouragement and example of Action for a Clean Environment, the Newtown Florist Club, Eco-Action, and experts in environmental justice and civil rights, concerned residents of Bean Creek have begun to form their own group, Friends of Bean Creek (FBC), to identify and address environmental, health and safety issues affecting the quality of life for residents. The group plans to conduct a survey of the community and compile data to support efforts to remedy known environmental, health and safety problems. When evidence cannot be obtained to verify or document concerns, FBC plans to address perceived problems through cohesive community action to improve the quality of life for African Americans in the Bean Creek community, White County, Georgia.

ACE sent out an appeal letter asking for support of the work being done with Friends of Bean Creek, and appreciates the support of our membership in this important work.

— Excerpts of report by Bean Creek History Project director Caroline Crittenden, with ACE Bean Creek Project director Joanne Steele.

Soque Flood-Plain Project
Spring/Summer 2003

ACE and the Soque River Watershed Association are working together in a project to protect an area along Route 197 that is subject to flooding. The area contains a trailer park community of Hispanics where the community septic system is inadequately placed. The system could be relocated but then the source of drinking water could be affected.

Solving the problem will involve the County Health Dept. as well as the owner of the property. Members of St. Mark’s Church have expressed interest in working with the Hispanic community, and we look forward to working with all those concerned.

Free Water
Winter 2002/03

How free should water be? State House Bill 237 says farmers can sell their water permits to anyone they choose. Does this take away water from the rest of us? The sale of water rights is the hallmark of western water law, which has resulted in drying up the Colorado River before it reaches the ocean. That makes water a commodity to be bought and sold, and would strip downstream communities of protection. HB 237 is now in the State Senate.

Then there is SB 180, also being discussed in the State Senate, which would prevent the buying and selling of water rights. For more information on these bills, try www.georgiawater.org.

Please call Senator Ralph Hudgens, who is on the Senate Natural Resources Committee, at 404-463-1361, as well as any other members of that committee, and tell them not to support HB 237.

Scarce Water
Winter 2001/02

Have the Chattahoochee water wars got you down? Other parts of the world have even worse troubles — and a warning.

Central Asia’s Aral Sea, which used to be the world’s fourth-largest lake, has shrunk so dramatically that it has split into two separate bodies of water.

The two rivers that feed it were diverted in the 1960s to water cotton fields; now just a trickle reaches the sea, and much of that is contaminated by pesticides and fertilizers. As the sea has receded, villages and small cities that used to be bustling metropolises have become dusty ghost towns. Fishing and shipping industries in one town have disappeared, textiles and electronics factories have closed up shop, and agriculture is suffering from desertification and heavily salinized water.

The sea’s retreat has brought colder winters and hotter summers, and the incidence of anemia, tuberculosis, infant mortality; cancer and respiratory disease are all on the rise.

— www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/15390/story.htm

The EPA has unveiled a new administration plan to protect and restore the Great Lakes. The plan aims to reduce PCB concentration in some Great Lakes fish species, restore or enhance 100,000 acres of wetland in the Great Lakes Basin, decrease introduction of invasive species, and accelerate the clean-up of contaminated sites.

However, the government has not set aside any additional funding to implement the plan.

More than 30 million people rely on the Great Lakes for their drinking water, and untold numbers seek out recreation on the more than 600 Great Lakes beaches in the U.S.

— Detroit News, AP, James Prichard, 02 April 2002

In the past, governments unanimously believed that access to basic human services such as water, healthcare and education should not be included in trade agreements because these were essential components of citizenship. However, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) began the process of eroding these basic human rights. Today, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is poised to take this process to a whole new level.

The FTAA’s “service agreement” grants private corporations sweeping new authority to overrule government regulations. Under the FTAA, all public services — schools, hospitals, prisons — would be forced to open up for competition from foreign for-profit service corporations.

The FTAA would increase the number of towns and cities forced into privatizing their water systems and would reduce the ability of governments to ensure that the privatized systems work to protect the environment, consumers and workers.

Privatized water is delivered to those who can pay for it, such as wealthy cities and individuals, agriculture and industries. As one resident of New Mexico’s high desert observed after his community’s water was diverted for use by a high-tech industry, “Water flows uphill to money.”

— Maude Barlow, “Water Incorporated,” Earth Island Journal, Spring 2002

If our regional drought goes on much longer, we’ll wish we had put more conservation measures in place, like encouraging (or even distributing) low-flow shower heads, reminders to turn off the tap while brushing teeth, and planting species that need less watering. It need not be only a cactus garden ­ consult your gardening gurus at the Extension Service.

And let’s not pave four-lane roads across the watersheds of North Georgia, our great water source.

Georgia’s Water
Summer 2001

Water is on many people’s minds these days, both quality and quantity. The Water Plan Study Committee set up by Senate Resolution 142 last spring has been holding monthly meetings, preparing to formulate Georgia’s water management needs. Todd Rasmussen, a hydrologist at the UGA School of Forest Resources, is concerned that the committee advising the Study Committee is not fully involving citizen and environmental groups, as required by the resolution. The Advisory Committee was supposed to include environmental and local river basin citizen groups, but only a few such people have been invited.

In fact, the Study Committee was told that

1) watersheds are not suitable for planning purposes in Georgia,

2) the highest priority for water use should go to support municipal and industrial growth, leaving the minimum amount of water possible in rivers and streams,

3) Georgia EPD, an engineering agency with little resource management training, is the only state agency able to do water planning, and

4) many more regional reservoirs are needed, there is no need to worry about the quality of the water left in the stream nor the effects of consumptive use, such as evaporation or interbasin transfers.

Dr. Rasmussen, who spoke at the annual meeting of the Broad River Watershed Association on Aug. 18, is especially concerned about the lack of representation by some of the major river basin citizen groups, such as the Broad River group, the Upper Oconee Watershed Network, the Altamaha Riverkeeper, the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, the Georgia River Network, the St. Mary’s River Group, and many more.

Instead, city mayors and directors of wastewater treatment plants have been appointed in spots reserved for river basin citizen groups. Also, significant environmental groups are missing — the two groups invited (Georgia Wildlife Federation and Georgia Conservancy) may not be sufficient to represent the wide range of the state’s environmental community.

Now is the time when local citizens who know their own watersheds can contribute their knowledge and concerns. Once priorities for water use are established, local citizens may have little or no input. Please call, write, fax or email the following key individuals to let them know of your commitment to protect Georgia’s water resources.

Co-chairs for the Study Committee, Rep. Bob Hanner, 9610 Plains Hwy, Parrott, GA 31777-9505, 912-623-2841, and Sen. Hugh Gillis, 302 Louisiana Ave. W, Soperton GA 30457, 912-529-3212. Chairman of the Advisor committee, Dr. James Kundell, UGA Institute of Government, 201 N. Milledge Ave., Athens GA 30602-7509, 706-542-6250 (x-0739 fax), kundell@cviog.uga.edu The Governor’s Water Advisor, Stephen Draper, 1401 Peachtree St. Ste 500, Atlanta 30309, 404-872-7642 (x-355- 2256 fax), sedrap@aol.com.

— Todd Rasmussen, trasmuss@smokey.forestry.uga.edu

Sinking City
Summer 2001

Could this happen in Georgia? Water-hungry Los Angeles is pumping so much groundwater that the area is rising and falling each year in tune with the seasons, according to a report published Aug. 23 in the journal Nature.

Using global positioning system satellites, a research team from the U.S. Geological Survey calculated that some parts of the L.A. area have been sinking half an inch a year, while others are rising a quarter-inch every year. In some parts, the seasonal difference can be more than four inches, rising in the fall and early spring, and falling in the summer.

‹ Los Angeles Times, Robert Lee Hotz and Kenneth Reich, 23 Aug. 2001.

Clean Streams
Spring 2000

A federal judge has upheld the right of the EPA to set limits for river pollution caused by runoff from logging, agriculture, and urban areas. Farm timber groups argued in a lawsuit that the EPA could regulate only industrial waste and sewage, pollution that comes from so-called point sources, like pipes.

But the court ruled that the EPA has the authority to set limits for water pollution from non point sources, such as runoff from pesticides and sediment from logging. The EPA says runoff is the nation¹s leading threat to water quality.

A survey released on April 5 by the National Wildlife Federation found that three fourths of the states are failing to address water pollution caused by runoff from farms and forests.

­ San Jose Mercury News, Paul Rogers, 4/6/00.

Trout Streams
Winter 1999/2000

Perhaps we shouldn¹t be allowed to watch legislation being made ­ it’s a messy process. That certainly applies to HB 1426, “the stream squeezer.”

A Ralph Twiggs effort, it would have reduced buffers on trout streams from 100 feet to 50 feet while allowing those buffers to be mowed, clearcut, or used as pasture.  Enough people complained so that Gov. Barnes set up a committee to reach a compromise: Sally Bethea of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Pierre Howard, former Lieut. Governor, and on the other side of the table, Lamar Paris and W. C. Nelson.

After a painful process the result was 50 foot buffers but no longer mowed, plus allowing tiny branches to be piped across the property of those who own the land without requiring a permit. The definition of a “vegetated buffer” and enforcement by EPD are still loose.  Buffers on non-trout streams are 25 feet wide.

Piping a stream destroys whatever was alive in it, fish or amphibian.  According to 23 Georgia ecology professors and scientists, interfering with those headwater streams could cause a change in the nutrients, temperature and overall biology that nourish trout.

The compromise is supported by Speaker Tom Murphy and Governor Roy Barnes and will probably pass. At least the Greenspace Initiative should pass with little alteration, so perhaps we should be grateful.

— Georgia Legislative Report, Georgia Chapter, Sierra Club