Atlanta Has a 3 Month Water Supply!

UPDATE -- NEW YORK TIMES REPORT
'DROUGHT-STRICKEN SOUTH FACING TOUGH CHOICES'

So you think global warming and the California water crisis is a big hype? You think "This is America" and in the good 'ole USA "Our Leaders" would never let us just slide into a catastrophe. Right?

Think again. The link below is from a recommended Diary over on The Daily Kos: Atlanta has a 3 month water supply!

According to an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Metro Atlanta has gotten less than 25 inches of rain this year when it normally receives 50 inches of rain annually. Lake Lanier, metro Atlanta's main source of water, has about three months of storage left!

That's three months before there's not enough water for more than 3 million metro Atlantans to take showers, flush their toilets and cook. Three months before there's not enough water in parts of the Chattahoochee River for power plants to generate electricity. Three months before part of the river runs dry.

The other amazing thing is that this is not a big national front-page story. Think the world is going to hell over oil? If people start fighting over water we ain't seen nothing yet.

Event: Dorothy Green of 'Heal The Bay' in L.A.

The Los Angeles Greens will feature guest speaker, Dorothy Green, founder of Heal the Bay. Four years ago she launched the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), http://www.c-win.org/ whose goal is to move our state toward a sustainable water future.

Wednesday, October 17, 7pm

Peace Center, 8124 W. Third Street, Los Angeles

http://losangelesgreens.org/

323-651-5539

Free, donations accepted.

* * * UPDATE * * *

Posted by the New York Times, October 15, 2007
Drought-Stricken South Facing Tough Choices
by Brenda Goodman

For the first time in more than 100 years, much of the Southeast has reached the most severe category of drought, climatologists said Monday, creating an emergency so serious that some cities are just months away from running out of water.

In North Carolina, Gov. Michael F. Easley asked residents Monday to stop using water for any purpose “not essential to public health and safety.” He warned that he would soon have to declare a state of emergency if voluntary efforts fell short.

. . .

In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days.

. . .

“In the West, people expect that it’s dry, and you’re going to have drought situations,” said Michael J. Hayes, director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “In the Southeast, people think of it as being wet, and I think that mindset makes it tougher to identify worst-case scenarios and plan to that level.”

“Here’s the fly in the ointment,” Mr. Hayes added. “The vulnerability in the Southeast has changed. Population shifts, increased competition and demand for water has increased, so that’s made this drought worse than it might have been.”

Think the world is going to hell over oil? You ain't seen nothing yet, baby.