Goulding Creek Watershed

Here in northeast Georgia the pleasant October temperatures (and they have been wonderful), coupled with the last four days of 0.65 inches of rain amid misty cool weather already have folks sighing in relief that the drought is over. After this incredible 2007 summer, the last few days are tempting but beguiling. As of October 24 there have been 21 days with daily high temperatures averaging 8 degrees above normal highs. Because I’m such a glutton for punishment, I decided to check on the year as a whole. 204 days of 296 so far have been above average in terms of high temperatures:

Serious journalists talk about the drought of the last few months - a very few note that we’ve been in a drought here for the last two years. In reality we’ve been experiencing ongoing rainfall deficits and can even peg the beginning to May 1998. The last few months have just been the ultimately revealing consequences of a decade of declining rainfall here:

In the above plots, the “average” red lines are the month by month averages during the years 1920-1997. The green line is what we (Athens, actually) experience during this interval. By the way, Athens is one of the few US cities where it seems possible to get this much climate data without having to (re)purchase it from some governmental entity. That link will take you there.

I used NOAA’s ENSO Update Page to add the El Niño-Southern Oscillation events of the last ten years. “E” stands for El Niño, in which we are supposed to get colder, wetter winters. “L” stands for La Niña which typically brings drought and summer heat. If you were paying attention toward the end of the millenium you will remember the first three years of our continuing drought, in which actually three La Niñas occurred back to back.

We’re supposed to get more rain during an El Niño, but the above plot shows little effect by those events.

It’s one thing to receive “only” 92% of expected rainfall over a period of a month, and quite another to realize that you’ve been maintaining a deficit averaging 8% of expected since February of 2000. At this point we’d need an entire year of *additional* rain just to catch up. With the Pacific Decadal Oscillation trending into its cold phase for the next 20 or 30 years, it’s not likely to happen. The cold phase PDO acts to accentuate drought-inducing La Niñas (in the southeast US, at least) and to diminish rain-bringing El Niños. These are ecology-changing events.

– Wayne

Last night two of us attended the public comment session for the latest draft of the Georgia State Water Plan (SWP). At least on paper, this is a fairly progressive effort to manage state waters in a comprehensive fashion. The Georgia Environmental Protection Division was authorized by the state legislature in 2004 to come up with this plan and has been working through drafts and public commentary ever since. Last night was public commentary on the second draft release and after comments are closed on Oct 31, a third draft will be produced. This will be subject to hearings and comment in November and then will go to the state legislature in January of 2008.

If you’re not familiar with the SWP by all means go to that site and read it. Then register and offer your comments online.

The public meeting last night was a gathering of fifty or sixty participants, and competently and patiently moderated by Kevin Farrell of the GAEPD Watershed Protection Branch. After a very brief introduction the rest of the two hours was turned over to commentary. I counted twenty or so individuals actually getting up and speaking, including one of us. A quarter of the comments came from the “green industry” contingent, which includes plant nurseries, greenhouse growers, and sellers. Three or four comments came from nongovernmental organizations such as the Upper Oconee Watershed Network (and I’m sorry I didn’t catch this representative’s name), April Ingle of the Georgia River Network, and I suppose you could include us in that category, and one of us did make a one-minute statement.

Comments ranged from very specific and brief (ours) to long-winded and only tangentially connected to the SWP. The latter included the green industry growers, who tended more toward complaint about the Level 4 water restrictions. They have something of a point in claiming that their industry has borne most of the brunt of the outdoor water restrictions, although I think much of the truth of this is obscured. Most don’t rely on municipal water sources anyway, and those that do are surely in the wrong place using the wrong resources and, frankly IMO peddling the wrong wares (do we really need more Bradford Pears?). But they were passionate, and it is true that the biggest users of water (University of Georgia, poultry and other industries, residents, and so forth) are untouched by the restrictions because they fall under indoor water use, and not outdoor. They tended to characterize themselves as mom and pop businesses unfairly targetted and in danger of going out of business. I can see this point.

More directly addressing the SWP itself were comments lamenting the exemption of metropolitan Atlanta from the SWP. Atlanta apparently has its own regional water plan and so would not be a part of this. April Ingle of Georgia River Network spoke to this issue and has also summarized it here.

Comments also addressed the weak conditionality of the language of the SWP. Many of them urged the drafters to replace “shoulds and coulds” with “wills and musts”. We’ve run into this ourselves: such ambiguous language provides tons of loopholes for exceptions and escape holes, precisely what a good SWP should correct.

Quite a number of comments addressed watersheds downstream of reservoirs, offering almost exclusively the opinions that more reservoirs would be detrimental to ecologies downstream and that current enforcement of outflow from reservoirs is inadequate. (The recent lawsuit by the Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue against the Army Corps of Engineers is an exception to this.) This is especially pertinant. There has been an increasing number of voices crying to dam up creeks and rivers to create private reservoirs, and we were relieved to hear that the vast majority of commenters saw this as insanity.

A quick rundown of some of the points made, without attribution:

After the meeting we met a number of folks that we’d only spoken to on the phone, or by email, all this time. This included the moderator, Kevin Farrell, Assistant Watershed Protection Branch Chief for the Oconee, Ocmulgee, and Altamaha River Basins. We also had the pleasure of talking briefly with April Ingle, Georgia River Network Director, who had had some pertinant and concise commentary earlier in the evening.

All in all, quite an interesting evening.

–Wayne

26 September 2007

I’ve just read the document authored by Wayne Hughes, Glenn Galau and Pat Nolan (contained in a post to Niches and archived here); and I’ve just spent an hour or so chatting with Glenn, who impresses me as a very reasonable and responsible neighbor. I hope and believe that the LOA board does NOT, as the document asserts, consider the discussion closed, but ongoing, and that the board will contact Wayne and Glenn to let them know of ongoing efforts (Brown Widener did in fact, in his letter reporting on the recent LOA vote, notify them of certain measures the board was attempting to take in further exploration of this very serious issue); specifically, I personally (and I do not speak for the board at all) would like to see us (a) insure that open dialogue continues, with good will and without rancor, (b) that we continue to investigate, as I THINK was/is intended, the costs and feasibility of inflow/outflow monitoring devices, and (c) find out what is happening with the studies it seemed hydrologist Todd Rasmussen was planning to conduct.

The preponderance of scientific judgment we have seen thus far suggests there would be no advantage to releasing water from the lake during the current drought. The bottom line, so far as we have been able to determine to date, in a good-faith effort to make rational decisions, seems to be that releasing water from the lake during this extreme drought condition would, on the one hand, likely not benefit the situation downstream (the release of 5-6 inches resulting from last month’s trespass and tampering reportedly had no appreciable beneficial effect), and, on the other hand, would likely damage the ecology of the lake. At this point the lake, even in its present, diminished state (it was down 14 inches when I measured this weekend), is arguably providing at least some real benefit for the entire community, i.e., as a sanctuary for waterfowl and other wildlife from both upstream and down, that would be without any water habitat without the lake.

For the future, however, and even though the Lake Oglethorpe community may not be required to do so by law, I would personally advocate INVESTIGATING the feasibility of acquiring equipment to monitor inflow and outflow and the implementation of measures that would insure to the extent possible outflow equal to the measurable inflow; furthermore, I personally welcome any and all solid scientific evidence that Dr. Rasmussen or other knowledgeable and impartial experts can provide to our community to help us all deal with this horrendous 100-year drought rationally and amicably. Let’s all of us strive for cooperation, not confrontation–-it’s the only sane way to problem-solve, especially now as we face the prospect of dramatic climate changes unprecedented in recent decades.

I might add, as a footnote, that I was dismayed at the provocatively editorializing title of Lee Shearer’s front-page article in the Wednesday, Sep. 19, Athens Banner-Herald, “Lake Oglethorpe hoarding water, residents lament.” Lee’s article itself was reasonably balanced in its representation of the complexities of the situation and nowhere used the word “hoarding”; he did not himself author the headline, and I have expressed my chagrin (though I expect it fell on deaf ears) to the Banner-Herald at the anonymous headline-writer and editors everywhere who allow, or encourage, such distortions. We have an unfortunate situation in the entire Lake Oglethorpe/Goulding Creek area, due to the severe 100-year drought we are experiencing throughout much of the state, the southeast, and many other parts of the country. I know that all the folks in the area and on this email list are genuinely concerned and want to do the right thing for the community and the ecology, and journalistic distortion can only fuel the fires of discontent and misinformation. The serious water issues involved are not going to be resolved via newspaper articles or letters to the editor, but rather by calm and continued dialogue among all the folks in our community, those upstream, on the lake, and downstream; we are all neighbors, usually good neighbors, and if I were living next-door to the gentlemen whose complaints brought the matter to Lee Shearer’s attention, chances are we’d be friends too–especially if, as they say, their concerns are with the ecology of the area.

Rick LaFleur

I have combined two Comments about the preceeding Post, Two Classes of Water Users: Not Everyone falls under the Level 4 Restriction and elevate them to their own Post. The writers live far away and, sadly for them, have more experience with water-use issues than most of us in Oglethorpe County.

Mark writes:
I suspect there would be fairly strong opposition to requiring every water user to abide by the same rules that most of the rest of us have to. I have seen gasoline-powered pumps with large intakes snaking into our nearest river, I presume providing irrigation for farmland. I doubt there is a permit for them. I’m not sure how I feel about exemptions for farming, but I’m sure I don’t want an irrigated green golf course right next to brown, dying forests. Or next to rural well users with dry wells, for that matter. Surely this drought should stimulate some public debate on realistic water use laws.

Bev follows:
I agree with Mark regarding taking of water when it will do harm to the ecosystem or the water supply of neighbours. In my own region in the province of Ontario, Canada, the government requires that anyone removing water — or just moving water — or creating large artificial reservoir ponds — possess a permit. It wasn’t always that way. Water-taking activities were not carefully monitored and enforced until more recent years. The change came about during a span of three consecutive years of summer droughts, when the creeks, rivers and lakes in this region became so stressed that attention was soon drawn to some of the water-taking activities that were going on along many of the watersheds. It was soon discovered that some people were removing water to irrigate golf courses, nursery operations, and crop lands. Further, a couple of industrial companies were also removing water for their own use.

Even when one possesses a permit, almost all permits up here are issued with the provision that, if drought conditions occur, or if the water-taking begins to impact on the watershed, all water-taking must cease until the situation has been checked out by the proper authorities. However, as some of us were to discover during one of the very dry summers, some of the permit-holders, as well as some who were operating without permits, continued to withdraw water from a couple of the local rivers in spite of the fact that water levels fell to the point of stranding fish in shallow pools where they soon died from heat and lack of fresh, moving water. In my opinion, when it gets to that point, it becomes more than an issue of what is “legal” to the point of being what constitutes being moral. To take water for your own purposes while allowing stranded fish to bake and die entrapped in 3 inch deep pools in a drying riverbed is morally criminal.

Fortunately, in recent years, the various watershed conservation authorities, who have jurisdiction over watersheds throughout Ontario, have become much more vigilant and involved in preventing such catastrophes. They are charged with overseeing water flow monitoring stations on creeks, testing for water quality, amonitoring benthic species, and ensuring that critical fish habitat is not damaged by human activities. In addition, these authorities control water levels and flow through out their watershed regions through restricting or releasing water at the many dams and locks. They monitor beaver dam building, and decide when such dams are beneficial, or when they are causing trouble. They watch for illegal structures being built along creeks such as dams or diversions, rerouting of watercourses, destruction of shoreline habitat in the name of “beautifying” lawns or building docks for boats. They also watch for illegal draining of provincially significant wetlands, and pollution from industrial, agricultural or domestic activities. The conservation authorities work closely with municipal and provincial government. Most have within their employ, hydrologists, wastewater management specialists, biologists, fisheries specialists, and municipal planners. Most conservation authorities have a board which is comprised of some municipal leaders as well as interested individuals from the community. I live in an area where there are three such watershed conservation authorities and all of them are doing a pretty good job of protecting the watersheds of our region. If you don’t have something similar in your region (and I take it that you don’t), perhaps now is the time to urge your state government to establish a similar system of watershed authorities.

First, our Government Not at Work. By Saturday evening there was not anything on the Georgia Environmental Protection Division site about their declaration on Friday, 28 September 2007. Not on their Homepage or on any of several pages that might contain Press Releases, including one under /Other Links/EPD News/ entitled EPD News Releases. (Don’t be tempted to click on /Events Calendar, Notices and Announcements/, you do not want to go there.) The actual Press Release is in fact at EPD, and under its own letterhead, but it is apparently linked only at the site of the Parent Agency, The Georgia Department of Natural Resources, not from anywhere inside EPD.

It is not surprising that it took a bit of searching to discover what media have not told their audiences when reporting that the EPD invoked Level 4 Water Restrictions throughout 61 counties in North Georgia. I am not talking about the long list of exemptions, or exemptions for which an application is required. These are included in the Press Release and in many accounts of it. I am talking about the question that must be on everyone’s mind who has learned of the Restriction:

Who of us can water outside as much as we want and for any purpose if we have it or can buy, borrow, or steal it?

According to an Existing Rules and Corresponding Laws page on the EPD site, Environmental Rule (Chapter) 391-3-30, Rules for Outdoor Water Use establishes Rules authorized by the Georgia Water Quality Act, the Ground-Water Use Act, and the Georgia Safe Drinking Water Act of 1977 (which are each linked on the Rules page). Using the 391-3-30 link takes us to a page from which downloads of six pdf documents are required to get the entire Rule. A single, compact pdf document with exactly the same content is here at EPD but like the Press Release is probably only linked to from the outside.

The answer to the question is remarkably succinct:

391-3-30-.02 Applicability of Rule

These rules apply to any entity, and its customers, permitted by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) for water withdrawal or for operation of a drinking water system.

I have to conclude that there are two classes of users of water. The privileged are not permitted and are not legally bound by the Restriction. That privileged class includes all of us not using water from a permitted source. A shocking discovery with several implications because what each of us does affect, tomorrow or next month or next year, the surface and ground water used by permitted and nonpermitted here and downstream. But we apparently can do whatever we want. We can continue to take from our expensive deep, drilled wells which give us an oh-so-fine sense of security or continue to take, directly or indirectly, from that large lake or stream that allowed us to get by with a cheap dug well whose threat of now going dry colors most everything except our understanding of our original sin. Or we can behave as if we are under the same social contract as our nonpriviledged neighbors.

Now, who are these nonpriviledged, those who have a permit and must obey the Restriction? Their names should be on a list somewhere, so we can find out who they are. Most of them are municipal water systems, but there are others. If their use of water normally exceeds 100,000 gal a day a permit is required. But what constitutes use is still unclear to me. Commentary by others about the requirements of permitting suggests there are a number of entities who are required to have a permit, or in a reasonable world should have a permit, but who for various reasons do not have one. The implementation of the Level 4 Restriction exposes why it is not in their interest to be permitted. By remaining outside the law they may then be legal in what they may choose to engage, here perhaps doing whatever outside watering is desired and practicable. They should understand that they are moving closer to center stage with every day of drought and their actions will get attention, particularly in how they respond to a Restriction they can probably legally ignore. But this is also true of all of us who are nonpermitted for whatever reason.

If I am correct in my understanding of the responsibilities of the nonpermitted, I suspect that there is by government a deliberate obfuscation that we live in such a two-class system of water users. In the present case, government’s lack of clarity should change the behavior of those who unknowingly need not comply and increase the desired effect. But I would not be surprised if there is a larger, less wholesome, motivation. Reviewing, testing, and documenting these preliminary conclusions must wait for more time. What does not require more study is that everyone should be responsible in their water use, and not just when Restrictions are imposed on the nonprivileged class.

Glenn Galau
This is not legal advice