Atlanta’s growth, failing pipes, and tri-state politics colliding over one finite resource.
Sept 26, 2025 – Georgia Science Junction.
Georgia’s “Water Wars” aren’t just courtroom drama with Alabama and Florida—they’re a daily operating constraint for metro Atlanta. Veteran USGS hydrologist John Clarke walked through why: a huge, multi-use Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river system where tiny headwaters feed outsized demand, with Lake Lanier (just 6% of basin area) supplying ~60%+ of storage and propping up minimum flows for drinking water, power cooling, navigation, fisheries, and endangered mussels. After decades of litigation, a 2021 Supreme Court loss kept Georgia’s current use intact, but the fundamentals haven’t changed: flows are finite, droughts bite, and every inter-basin transfer or new withdrawal shifts pain downstream.
Inside metro Atlanta, aging sewers and combined sewer overflows remain the ugliest risk vector. Atlanta and DeKalb have long-standing consent decrees after chronic spills driven by storm infiltration, fats/oils/grease (fogs), root intrusion, and 19th-century pipes meeting a 21st-century city. Relief tunnels now capture storm surges for delayed treatment, but deadlines loom (2027 for DeKalb) and failure means more raw sewage in creeks and bigger rate hikes. Translation: water quality is a governance and execution problem as much as an engineering one. And we got into this mess because water and sewage are typically “Out of sight; out of mind.”
Looking forward, population growth toward ~8M by 2050 collides with thirsty industry—especially data centers, with single sites projected near 6 MGD—threatening to reignite tri-state fights. Conservation works (low-flow toilet retrofits cut demand and even helped Georgia’s legal case), but it won’t be enough alone. Clarke’s take is clear: get brutally realistic about supply (no, the Tennessee River isn’t a magic tap), set hard allocation rules for industry, price scarcity, keep sewer upgrades on schedule, and treat surface- and groundwater as one system. Do that, and Georgia can grow without triggering the next lawsuit—or the next spill.
Check out the live stream
Until the live stream is cleaned up, the talk starts at 34:57
Hello. Can you all hear me? I got a thumbs up. Sounds great.
Is this actually? Oh my god, look at that. Hi everyone.
I’m Amy. Lex Olivia. Nice to meet you guys. Uh, I’m
feel like we should do this now. Uh, I’m Amy Chararma. I’m the executive director of Science for Georgia.
Super excited to have y’all here tonight. Thanks for being here. Uh, Science for Georgia um is an
organization that exists to get science out of the lab and onto the streets. So, we have three main activities. Science
communication training, science outreach adult uh events for adults. So, thanks for being adults and
coming to our outreach event. I really appreciate that. And uh then we do go down to the Georgia General Assembly and
and advocate for the responsible use of science and public policy. So, we’re doing a really good job there. Um, but
we’re gonna we’re going to do better. Uh, do you have a question? No. Okay. Just
just livening things up. Uh, but I am really excited about this because uh our
topic tonight is water wars and water is becoming even more precious and fought
over in Georgia. So, fun to kind of really dig into the history of how we
got here. Um, I didn’t move to Georgia until like 2014.
Um, but I know there’s like a long history of fighting with neighboring states over water and like whenever I’m
talking about advocating with my water friends, they always bring up this like long history. So,
yay, we’re learning new things. [Music]
All right. So, our speaker tonight is John Clark. He is a retired assistant
director USGS Georgia Water Science Center.
Um, he was a hydraologist. Oh, sorry. I’m sorry. We’re gonna get
there. He should be bigger. He is a hydraologist. You don’t just stop being a hydraologist
when you retire. He was the assistant director for her hydraulic investigations. He authored
more than 50 papers on Georgia groundwater. I know twice served as president of the
Georgia groundwater association. Uh he studied the potential for offsite
migration of contaminants at the US Department of Energy Savannah River site.
kind of really cool development of the hydraulic overview of Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories.
I know, right? And he designed and implemented the Georgia coastal sound
science initiative. So, this is really awesome. I like John’s a rockar. Yes.
Yeah, I know. I should have put this like at the top. We’re learning new things. It’s in the bio. I know, but no one reads the bio. That
was like three paragraphs down. Next time we’re going to be like rock star. Yeah. All right. Thanks for that. Uh but
I am like honored to bring John to the stage. Take it away, John.
[Applause] All right. Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you very much. Is that coming through loud and clear? Louder. I can’t hear us.
Okay. Um, pleasure to be here today. Um, going to talk to you about the water
wars that have Georgia has been involved in um
with our neighbors basically, but also internally. We have wars amongst ourselves. Um, this is going to focus
mostly on metro Atlanta. We’re going to talk all about, you know,
what’s the water competition here for with the other states and amongst ourselves. Uh what are some of the water
quality issues and what’s the outlook for the future?
So this is the uh the topic Georgia water wars. You’ll see uh you see the
state flags for Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Um and you’ll notice that
there’s some cannons involved in this shot. And uh this is actually a real
photo from the Savannah area. That’s the Savannah waterfront there. And those
cannons are pointed towards South Carolina. And so I always loved uh this photo because that was back when I was
working on the coastal sound science initiative which is about the issue that related to the saltwater intrusion at at
Hilton Head. And um it just so happened I was there a day where they doing these maneuvers there, these shooting the
cannons off. Perfect. So I took a picture because that’s another water warrior. We’re fighting over ground
water between South Carolina and Georgia. So this happened to be a perfect timing.
So water most precious resource lifeblood of our planet and for
millennia there’s been conflicts and competitions for it use. And uh I actually taught a course called water
wars that covered the entire planet. It talked about the history of it. talk
about the Middle East, the western US and other places throughout the world. And then of course here in Georgia,
just a large well, that’s a well that’s down in Brunswick, Georgia that can pump over 11,000 gallons a minute.
So water, there’s a lot of there’s some expressions. First is on the left there is water flows toward money. Okay, so we
know Las Vegas, right? where all the money is and by God somehow they they
developed a place that could get water in the middle of the desert and Hoover Dam there and there’s all sorts of
issues related there for water then Mark Twain in the middle there whisy’s for
drinking water is for fighting over and then that bottom one is uh
disputing water rights a western past
so it all begins with the water cycle and Of course, that starts with rainfall, precipitation, snow coming out
of the sky, falls on the ground. Um, some of it’s lost to evaporation. Uh,
some of it seeps into the ground and becomes groundwater. And then some, uh,
flows off the land surface and becomes the rivers and streams.
So, if we look at Earth’s water, most of the water on the earth is uh, salt water. Okay? only 3% of the water on
Earth is fresh water. So it is truly a precious resource of the fresh water um
most of it is trapped in ice caps and glaciers. Okay, all the fresh water but
about 30% of it is in groundwater.
So um and then surface water is only 1.2%.
It’s much more plentiful underground. So per capita water use, what’s that?
That’s basically the amount of usage per person. Okay? And as you might expect,
the poor countries of the world use very little per person. I was just in Uganda
a few weeks ago and I can testify to this. I saw these little kids going out just like this with their water jugs to
the community spring and they would fill that jug up and carry it back to the house, you know, however long of a walk
that was. So they weren’t going in and taking, you know, 20 minute showers and
things like that. So at the other end of the spectrum, we have us of course who
is the the biggest users the US 150 gallons per day per person. We are, you
know, the pigs if you want to call us that. Um, and you have giant communities with pools.
That’s actually Tony Soprano there.
Okay. So, what are the issues in metro land? You have competition for the available supply. Um, and there are
required minimum flows that you must keep in the streams. That’s monitored by stream flow gauging, which is what the
USGS the folks that I used to work for do they they monitor what the flows are
in the rivers. Um another issue here is uh related to that is water needed to
flush the sewage out. The solution to pollution is dilution right? So if you don’t have that then you’ve got a mess
basically. Uh you have to worry about what’s the downstream users needs are.
And of course all this led to the interstate water war that we’re having or we had between Florida and Alabama.
Okay. And then so and then projecting into the future, there is a shortfall of
available water going into the future. We’ll talk all about that. Then finally in Atlanta, big issue is sewage spills,
okay? Where water from sew sewers that are way outdated from the uh you know
that were built in the 1800s cannot handle the load of a modern city.
million people sitting on top of it. So, Atlanta is setting. So, we’re
located on the eastern continental divide, which is an upland area,
basically a ridge that’s favorable for transportation such as roads and railroads. It was part of a trail system
used by Native Americans. So, they would walk along the ridge
here and that bridge goes all the way up into the mountains north.
It’s the headarters of five major rivers. So you have off this off these off this divide, some of the water flows
toward the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve been waiting to say that for a long time
and then the other part flows to the Atlantic Ocean. So
it’s headquarters of these five major rivers. Uh in 1837, the location spot
where the Western Atlantic Railroad terminated and got the name Terance. That was it original name.
So in this area because you have all these different rivers that are heading up in Atlanta, you have
basically five different water basins that are right next to each other. And what happens there is that um we have
what’s called innerbasin transfer. That’s where the water is maybe pumped out of one river and when they put it,
they do their it becomes sewage. Then where do they pump it? They pump it to another river. So that’s that happens.
Um where they’re showing here the uh the Chattahuchi River, you’ve got water
flowing out quite a bit actually, but you have some coming back in
the Flint River that’s coming and going. So if you look
at the net flow, if you take all the water that’s coming in and subtract the that’s going out. There’s a net outflow
of 99 million gallons a day. The river is losing water to the other basins that
are in the area. So to deal with all this intervas stuff,
the the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District was established back
in 2001. Uh and they are staffed by the Atlanta Regional Commission personnel.
Um basically they’re one of the most comprehensive water management programs in the US. They develop very proactive
developing water plans and managing the water and educating the public. Uh
they’re very uh they do a great job.
So this tri-state water we have two major basins. We have the Alabama Cusa Talapusa which
is this area here and then you have the Chatti
which is this green arrow and this is the one that’s been really in the news. This is the one where the most contentious uh issues have come up and
that’s what most of this talk is going to talk about but it’s been over two decades of
litigation between Alabama and Georgia and that’s Clarence Darrow there. It hasn’t been quite that long, but
Clarence Dar spokes monkey
1920s, I guess it was.
No, no, this guy.
So the Appalacha, Chattahuchi, Flint, we call it the ACF basin. ACF
and uh it covers over 19,600 square miles in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia.
Most of it’s in Georgia. 74% of that water basin is in Georgia. And it
supplies over 60% of the drinking water for Georgia, lesser amounts in Alabama and Florida. Interesting thing about
this is so you have this humongous basin but most of the water is in this place right up here. Anybody know what that
is? Lake. Lake. That’s it. So here we are. This is
this is the end of the basin here. So look at this small area that the water when the rainfall hits the ground that’s
drain into Lake Plane. So that’s only 6% of the total basin size. But this
provides over 62% of the entire water in the basins provided by this lake. So um
and so there’s a intense competition for this water between the various states. I’ll tell you a little bit more about
Lake Laneir. So it was completed in 1956 when they made Buford dam. It principal
purpose was for flood control and power generation. But it also was used for recreation,
water supply, navigation and fish and wildlife management. It’s over 7.5
million visits a year. When we talk about the amount of storage that it
provides for the whole ACF basin, but it only covers 6% of the bas.
So with this knowing this, what’s happened here is why it has so much water in it is it’s so deep. 160 ft is
pretty deep and so it can hold a lot of water and plus it’s being fed by even
though it’s a small area only 6% of the total basin. It’s the area of the heaviest rainfall in the state. So you
get tons of rainfall and it drains off and goes into the lake. Yes. How did they figure out?
How do they figure out what because there’s rain all over and they
they make maps out of that. They know where it’s happening. So
yeah. So all right. So now I’m going to just go
through this is sort of a sequence of slides just showing you how how much water how water is being used in the
basin. So this is another thing but okay thermmo electric power okay so that’s your uh you know the burn coal burning
plants for example but we also have nuclear in Alabama this plant is in
Alabama all the others are coal fire plants gas modified plants
hydroelectric power couple reservoirs in within the basin that are generate electricity that way
navigation. So that’s where you got to keep the channel at a certain depth so that the barges can carry up supplies,
you know, crops or whatever they’re carrying in the basin. Recreational
boating throughout of course Lake, a bunch of that commercial fishing, that’s basically
down here, the Appalachiccola Bay where the uh oysters are. That’s that’s really
the bone of contention with Florida. It’s all based oysters. Um, recreational fishing throughout the
basin. Industry. So, industry is pretty prevalent throughout the basin.
Endangered species. Now, this is basically muscles. They have all sorts of muscle
species that are endangered. And what happens is when the land goes dry because of the river’s been over, you
know, pumped or, you know, during drought conditions, the muscles will die.
And then there’s irrigation which is throughout mostly in the Clinton River basin and that’s mostly ground water and
ground water interacts with surface water. So it affects the stream flows. So I can show you that
public supply that’s mostly up in metro Atlanta but you can see it’s scattered throughout
even down to Columbus. sewage disposal. So this is where after
the water’s used, it’s put back into the river after they clean it up. So that’s
mostly in the Atlantic area. So I mentioned flow requirements. This
is mandated by the EP um where they have certain requirements.
So up here in Atlanta, this is metro Atlanta, they must maintain a flow of 750 cubic feet per second.
waste water that’s put back into the river. And cubic foot of water is about
about the amount of water held in a basketball. So that’s like 750 basketballs floating per second through
an area. Um further down river we have oops we have
power plant cooling. So this is a coal fired plant and they want to cool the
water when it’s put back in. Then we have
This is Lake Seinal down the southern part of the state and it needs flow for
variety of reasons and then another power plant downream of that lake.
So at Atlanta you have this minimum flow of 750 cubic feet per
second. Um this is immediately upstream of of Peach Street Creek. This is
monitored by the USGS stream gauge. That’s a very critical thing. It’s like
it’s used for like legal purposes and all that that data from that that place. Um
let’s see this that flow was in place since the 70s. Make sure that you have enough water coming in there to flush
the sewage out. So this all happened. So here we are at Lake. We get up here. We have water
coming out for water supply. But they actually actually some sewage goes back in that lake. They clean it
and they put it back in. When it comes downream, you got the land takes it water out. The cab. But they also put
back some sewage over here
takes water out. But here’s where all this where that flow requirement takes place. So we’re down here. Here’s the
USGS stream gauge keeping making sure it’s 750 CFS. But then Atlanta takes its
water out and then right below right downream is where it goes right back in. So that it’s kind of amazing. You’re
getting your drinking water and then right immediately you’re putting that back sewage in like within very small
distance really. What’s that?
So moving on down. This is the nuclear power plant in Alabama that was put in
1970 and another unit was put in in 77 uh supplied over 20% of the electricity
to Alabama and it’s got a 2000 CFS 2000 basketball per second requirement.
Lake SEL completed in 1957 with the Woodrip Lock and Dam. Um it does flood
control, hydroelectric power, navigation, fish, wildlife, and general recreation. It’s only 6% of the basin
storage as opposed to linear which is like 62%. Um and it has a minimum flow requirement
that’s variable because there’s it’s based on an operational plan that the core of engineers has that If it’s if
it’s this uh uh condition outside, you know, we have to protect the animals,
let’s say, or we need to control for the flooding and things like that. It’s based on a variety of parameters and the
core of engineers monitor that. Moving downream from Lake Simo, we go to
the next coal fired plant that was opened in 1953
and it’s got a 4,000 CFS requirement which is needed to uh you know of course
cool the water off but also to maintain the depth so that they can suck the water out to use in the plant. certain
depth of the pipes going to that level. And then finally, the Appalach Bay,
which is the largest oyster fishery in the southeast with over 134
million dollars of handling.
So storage from Lake Air is important for maintaining the flow requirements
and it’s very uh strictly monitored. Um
it’s USGS gauge which instead of measuring the stream flow measures the height of
the reservoir. How deep is the is the water.
So these are some of the critical elevations in that lake. So if the water
levels were to drop below,71 ft you would start having problems with
recreational. People’s docks are going to go dry. the beaches are going to go away and it’s going to be just not a
pleasant place to to play in. Um power generation will uh begin to fall off at
1,035 ft elevation. Uh water supply will have issues it gets below,25 and then
there will be no power generation at all if you get to 120 because you’re getting below their intakes for the turbines.
The lowest elevation reported was 1050 uh in December of 2007 during severe
drought. So that’s falling in this in this area below the recreational issue and above
the power generation. That’s just looking at what the lake
looked like at that time period. How dry it got pretty ugly looking.
little all these little fingerling inlets were just dried up. Imagine what real estate values were
like throughout here.
So flows in Florida. So Lake Simol here is where the Chattahuchi
and the Flint River come together. And then there’s a dam and it forms this
reservoir and then the flow out of there becomes goes into the Appalach.
So the af
has a pronounced interaction with the rivers. So if you pump from wells you may be impacting the stream flow and
that also which goes on with those muscles. Heavy pumping can lower the levels and then
they get they get dry land and they die.
Some of the water in Lake flows into the aquifer through caverns in the limestone.
So this is the flows to Lake Seol. So about 34% comes from the Flint River, 47
from the Chattahuchi, about 18 from the ground. and then flowing out of it. But most of
it’s coming right through the dam, but you also have some ground water seeping out. You lose some from
evaporation. And then this is just sort of a fudge factor. It’s like water budget that it’s the plus or minus
basically on all these other. So this just looking at some interesting
photos. So here’s the when they were constructing Lake Sol, they came across these giant caverns and I mean they
pumped like millions of tons of grout into that to fix that. So if you had a
business invested back in 19 54, it should have been the cement business down near Lake.
Um this is actually was taken in modern day and it’s still leaking. This is a
whirlpool happening in the lake. So where the water is is seeping out and going into the ground.
So this is showing uh the irrigation down there. This is the biggest area of irrigation in the state. And you’ve
probably when you’ve flown around, you’ve seen these circular patterns on the ground. That’s where they have these
center pivot irrigation systems that they use well supplies.
Here’s your Lake Simol. And then this is the Flint River Basin and the Chattahuchi.
So a lot of pumping going on here.
So the interaction of ground water and surface water um you know under
unstressed conditions and natural conditions the water rainfall enters the aquifer and it flows
laterally and discharges into the stream. Okay. But then when you put a well in that intercepts some of that
flow and actually might even pull start pulling it out of the river. It’s
severing. So you’re intercepting reducing the amount getting in the stream and here you are where you’ve
actually reversed the flow and you’re pulling the water from the stream to the well.
So where does the pumping most affect the stream flow? And intuitively you
would say the closer you are to the stream it’s going to go. Well that’s
true. And then this groundwater model was used to actually delineate where
sensitive to that. So the red areas, the hot colors show where if you put a well in there,
you’re going to definitely you have a good probability of impacting the stream flow. And the results of this were used
to guide a withdrawal permiting decisions by the EPD. And for a while there was a total
moratorum down there. They didn’t let you put any wells in at all.
So talking about the legal issues and I’m not a lawyer so I’m not I don’t want to get into all the nuances of this but
I just sort of give you a general broad brush. So two decades they’ve been fighting over water in this area and a
lot of lawyers have been getting rich. Okay, very rich. Millions and millions of dollars have been spent on just
litigation. Um basically it’s focused on legal
challenges to the core’s management of the reservoirs both the ACF and the ACT.
Um in addition there was a direct challenge by Florida that went to the Supreme Court regarding how Georgia uses
the water and get into that.
So, okay. So, the act
the Alabama um
1980 metro Atlanta was looking to get additional water supplies from Lake Alatuna
and that dragged on for about 10 years. They kept asking for it, but the core wouldn’t do anything. U then Alabama got
concerned and sued the core to block any action on increasing the withdrawal from
Lake Alatun by Georgia. So they actually sued the core on that. So that kept
going on for years and years. And then finally in 2021
after a reallocation study and environmental
statement the core granted nature lands request for taking more water out of
um one of the key uh decisions decision was that they allowed um
the foring back of that fluid back into the lake.
So they would allow that water to go back in the lake and then they could claim that as part of the storage of of
the reservoir. So that was a big issue there going to let them do that.
So the ACF, which we’ve been talking about most of the talk, um Florida sued
Georgia back in 2014, um they wanted the water to be equally
aortioned between the states and they wanted to lock Georgia at 1992 pumping,
which I showed you those cannons earlier. I think the cannons might have come out if that if that actually happened because I mean that’s just that
you’d have to be basically removing people could not support the population
here if you did that. Um, in 2021, the
Supreme Court denied Florida’s request and dismissed the complaint. They said they did not do an adequate job of
presenting why Georgia should not be allowed to have that water.
And also, they didn’t do a sufficient job of proving that Georgia took water out and that
affected the oyster industry. They blamed Georgia for taking too much flows into the Appalachin
and then made it a bad habitat for the oysters and cut back on the yields from there.
So uh in March of 2017 the core adopted a master water control plan
and then environmental impact statement that incorporate all these things they’ve learned over the 20 years of
fooling around with this issue and basically explains how the water
will be aortioned throughout the throughout the basin.
There was another law, another suit was filed to challenge the operation manual
and the US court in Georgia
in favor of the court and but they’re still appealing that decision.
So now we shift over away from water quantity to water quality and sewers are
a big issue in metro Atlanta. city and also in county. So, it’s where
water uh it cannot be properly treated and it backs up and it comes out just
raw and untreated. That’s what you’re seeing here. I guess you’ve seen these when you go on little hikes. You go see
those little elevated um sewer manholes. You know, the reason they’re elevated is
that they’re trying to keep the pressure head above land surface so that the water can’t get out. Here’s where the
pressure is. because there’s so much water overwhelmed the uh the piping and
just come out. That’s why they raise them up like that is so that they have a high enough head so that the water will
not get out. Um, of course these are, you know, all sorts of nasty things, you
know, E.oli being a major part of that. Uh, and then it’s an issue both in Atlanta and in
so in the county and I happen to be me a technical advisor to the citizens
committee that is advising the county on whole sewage sewage issue. So I’ve been
involved in this for five or six years. Um, reasons for span. The aging and
inadequate infrastructure, you know, the pipes are old. Fat oils and grease, otherwise known as
fog, which could clog up the pipes. Heavy rain and inflow and infiltration,
cracks in the pipe, other ways that the ground water can get into the pipes.
Improper disposal waste such as people putting wet wipes, paper towels, and
hygiene products. You know, they claim that they’re disposable. They’re not.
They always, that’s one of the big things they try to educate people saying, “Don’t believe it. It’s not true. Don’t put disposable wet wipes
down your toilet.” Um, and then of course there’s tree roots that can grow in and block crack sew.
So just looking at some of these things, we have roots coming in here, getting
into the pipes, cracking through gaps in the pipes and getting into the pipes, having the cracks in the pipe. That’s
You can uncap things like you can have man. I was amazed at this. They actually said that they went through and were
trying to seal all you know the holes in the top of the man they used to take the pry bar to get to get the thing off.
They said that that actually can contribute a lot of water to into the sewage system. So they actually going
around and plugging covering those holes up so that they uh would not let water
of course you have crack pipes and so forth.
So f it’s basically the hardening of the sewer’s arteries. Okay.
Um it enters the plumbing system through garbage disposal sinks and toilets and
it can just plug the whole thing up. Of course you can imagine that if a restaurant doesn’t do their job and put
it in the thing that could be devastating. So they actually, you know, they’re under regulation. They have to dispose of their grease and they have
those, you’ve been behind a restaurant. Kind of nasty back there, but they have the they have the bins to put the grease
in. Yeah. And that’s because of this. So the sewage the timeline of sewer
problems in the cab. So there was major spill back in 2006 and that led to the
EPA opened EPA’s eyes. They said, “What’s going on here?” and
by 2010 EPA and the Georgia EP actually filed a civil complaint and it was
resulted in the cons consent decree. Anybody heard about that consent the consent decree which is basically
they said they they must do certain things to avoid being fined.
It was finalized in 2011. They had to upgrade the system and
half a million dollar civil penalty. And this is what I’ve been watching as I’ve
gone to these meetings. I’ve been seeing what they’ve been doing about it.
So in 2017, a record sewage spill occurred back down Finger Creek south of
town. Um and then another one 9.2 million gallon in 2020.
U it was just because the plant was overwhelmed by heavy rains. And I can tell you from what I’ve seen, the rains
are the worst problem. That’s that’s the biggest problem for how these sewers
have issues. Um, so 2025 they Department of Justice noted
that the CA was they were concerned that the CA wasn’t going to meet their 2027 deadline.
and u the consent degree was just modified
kept under higher scrutiny. So now it’s in a race and it’s time to complete the necessary upgrades by the 2027 deadline.
That’s what this citizens oversight committee is involved and we’re trying to try to keep you know hold the fire to
their feet a little bit make sure that they’re moving forward with that. Yes.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. The sewer rates in the county are insane. It’s
It’s all I mean, sorry. It’s a water rate, but it’s really water and sewer and you’re paying for this is what
you’re paying for. You know, the water supply is nothing. It’s this what cost the money.
So, Atlanta sewers. Okay. So, they were built beginning of the 19th century.
Some areas they combine storm water and household waste. So that that’s a very
big issue. Talk more about that. Um 1930s new sewer systems were built but
the system still struggled to keep up with the city’s explosive growth and increased paved surfaces which increases
the amount of storm water going into the sewers.
the system became severely overloaded. Raw sewage spills were happening
95 the Chattahuchi River Caper and you guys might know you probably had I don’t know if you had Sally but they come in
here and talk to you all but she’s you know that was her thing. She was in the middle of all that. Um
so they filed a federal lawsuit for violating the clean water act
and then the court ruled in their favor and that said the city was viable. Uh and a consent decree was wassued uh
which required Atlanta to implement a comprehensive plan to overall its sewer system. I know working at USGS we were
involved in this in that we u monitor the stream water quality which is a way
of measuring how how well the modifications have done for. So um
so combined sewer overflows this is where both your sanitary sewers and your
storm water goes to the same place. So you have a
here’s your sanitary sewer. Okay. It goes to the treatment plant, but they also have drains coming, storm
drains from the street, from the roofs, whatever would be put in the same pipe. So you can imagine during a big raintorm
how that would overwhelm the system. And when that happens, you get an overflow and they just dump the raw sewage out.
Goes right into right into the creek. So
give you an example of csos and and their effect on water quality. So a tale of two cities, Paris and Copenhagen. So
Paris, if you remember the Olympics over this over the summer, they uh the river sand was used to uh uh
for the opening ceremony and for the triathlon and marathon swimming events that these guys are jumping. Um, the
city has operated under a combined sewer system since the 1830s, back in the days of the Phantom.
Um, and despite the major infrastructure changes
that they tried to do before the Olympics, uh, concerns about the river’s
quality, particularly EOLI after rainfall, led to some events being postponed and concern and actually some
athletes got ill.
On the other hand, Copenhagen, and I’ve been to Copenhagen. Um, this is
uh in 95 they were sort of a similar situation. They had combined sewers and
they had 93 places where they knew of where where raw sewage was going directly into the Copenhagen Harbor and
adjacent areas. But they invested heavily in the uh fixing their sewer
system, the treatment They improved uh the quality because
they were able to take that water and store it um in an area where they could
hold it until they were able to treat it and we are doing something like that here. Tell you about um but today
Copenhagen has excellent water quality and I was here and this is hotel I stayed at and these are all people that
are like just sunbathing and swimming in the lake. So they have like in the little fenced off area where they can go
in. There’s little places they can go off. There’s diving places and this is it. This is a recreational place in the
middle of a major city. And I can tell you Oslo is like that also. It’s very
very interesting. But anyway, this is the hope that we could get to this point. Um so you have these sewage
relief tunnels and so basically they’re put in not to transport water. They’re just put in in order to hold the water.
They have these things that are probably 20 foot diameter boring devices that go
in and they re these tunnels. And I’ll show you the ones we have here how big they are. But um they go in and then
when you have a big storm event, the overflow instead of going in the rivers, they dump them into these tunnels and
then the sewage treatment plant can treat it, you know, in a more timely
manner. They don’t have to do it immediately. They can’t they can’t handle the amount of flow that they’re getting with. So they have to
do it slowly.
So, here we are at So, this is one of the tunnels that’s being drilled here. You can see how big the diameter of this
is a machine here that bores through it.
It’s kind of like a a dune worm going through the ground. Um, so this shows you how
big these things are. The west area tunnel, the storage 177
million gallons over eight miles trench 1.8 miles somewhere less storage
Nancy Creek 8 miles and exact storage is not known because it’s combined
with the west area tunnel so they’re not sure how much of this contributes to it in the south river tunnel 1.7 miles 10
million storage so these actually they’ve shown that they’ve actually helped the situation some
so leaving water quality. Now we’re moving to the future and how to meet the future
needs for metro Atlanta. So this is the slide we’re having to
reload, but uh this is basically the projected population growth for 15
counties surrounding Atlanta. Um see we’re like about 5.5 or so now and by
2050 we’ll be up like almost eight million people here. So you know take
your per capita 150 per person amount you can do some
projections and this is what the water use is projected to be the growth of that from
about 580 today let’s say and going up to 899
by 2050. So one thing as I was preparing this
talk I wasn’t really familiar with this um how much water that data centers use.
And I’ll give you my spiel here, but actually I’ll tell you what, you guys have a better spiel about this than I
have Amy put together. And um but it’s basically due to the the cooling demands
of the servers and um they use a ton of water. So they they’re projecting that a
place down in Kita County, it’s probably going to need about six million gallons of water a day.
to cool off those servers. Um, and the problem with this is, you know, we’re
right in the middle of this area, which is the water war, the interstate water. So, we have all these data centers come
up in here. This is all the Chatti here or the ACF. Well, you start adding
that much water use, what’s that going to do to the flows downstream? Are you going to raise again get Florida and
Alabama all upset because of what’s going on up here? So,
caution and warning for this is just projecting
future electrical demand but you figure there’s a correlation between that and what the water usage would be. So you
can see how that has grows over the years significantly for these data centers.
So, how do we get more water for Atlanta? Well, there’s water conservation and actually we’ve been
pretty successful with that. I’ll tell you about these toilets in a second. And then in the basin water transfer from
the Tennessee River, is that a possibility? So, let’s go back to our household water
use, you know, of the 150 gallons per person day we use, most of it’s from the
toilet. 26.7%
with lesser amounts for washers and shower faucet, but the toilet’s the
biggest. So, they established a toilet rebate
program and I actually took advantage. I don’t know if anybody else did, but you get a free toilet. If you live in metro Atlanta, you can
get a free toilet because it’s going to be a low flow toilet to replace what you have. You go to Home Depot and you fill
out a form and you’ll get So, um
we established in the mid 2000s. Um the Metro North Georgia water plan uh
district administers this guides the other utilities. Uh the old toilets used
to use about 3.5 gallons per flush, but these more modern models uh 1.28 and
even 1.1 gallons per flush. So, how much does that
So far they’ve replaced about 150,000 uh toilets and that saves at least 2.4
million gallons per day and 900 million gallons per year and it’s like a 48%
change by switching from the old to the new 48%.
So another solution I’m not sure how viable this is, but they they’ve talked about
grabbing the water from the Tennessee River. And Tennessee River is a monster river compared to Chattahuchi. It’s a
very big river. Um, and it’s only uh 2.5 miles away from the northern part of
Georgia near Chattanooga. That water would have to be pumped pipe over 100 miles. That may sound like a
lot, but think about places like, you know, Las Vegas and all these places out west in Phoenix and all that.
Los Angeles, how far they pump water. You know, all these. We have a a guest
here from Los Angeles. He knows all about this.
You’re probably surprised that we have these problems here.
So, um this just comparing the flow characteristics of the two rivers. So, average flow Tennessee 24 billion
gallons daily only 1.6 billion gallons from Chattahuchi. Pretty amazing.
So, one solution that was proposed a few years ago was to actually move the state
border because it’s claimed that surveyor I don’t know if he was a drunk surveyor, but he he didn’t put the right
uh state borderline. So, it’s it’s supposed to be following 35th parallel
launch to 35 degrees. Um, but surveyed it wrong and it’s it’s in the wrong
location. So, Georgia wants to shift that border so they can actually touch the river. So, if they shifted it to
that 35 degree, they’d actually be touching the city river. Um George actually passed a resolution
and established a house committee and I just found out that in this period of
madness in politics, they’ve actually re-uped that committee. So, um
Now, Tennessee, um, they kind of laugh it off. They don’t
believe that we’re serious. And of course, I contend if this ever happened, the cannons would come out.
So, just to summarize, uh, Metro Atlanta faces a variety of sewer issues, including competition for
supply, minimum flow requirements, and sewage bills. Lake provides most of the basin storage but only covers a small
part of the basin and water from Lake uh
is used to control weeds downstream from it. Uh they’ve
been a f the ACFAC have been focusing two decades of litigation between
Georgia, Florida and Alabama. Right now Georgia has won the Supreme
Court case and they are happy as can be about that.
But there’s still some things important. U some things related to the water control manuals.
Um we talked about the sewage overflow. Um you know they
are consent decrees on both cab and Atlanta to make sure that they are
working to improve the sewer system so that they’re not contaminating the
rivers and creeks. And one of the major ways they do that is through combined sewer overflow
relief tunnels. Um, of course, metro Atlanta’s growing
population is driving increased need for water. Um,
and data centers are going to be a factor that is going to be a big player in this. Um and potential solutions
include water conservation which is actually I can tell you the water conservation actually influenced
uh the court in their decision about not finding for Georgia rather than Florida.
They felt that Georgia was very proactive in trying to uh reduce their
usage by virtue of that toilet rebate program and that had an impact on what the
decision was and of course the uh moving to Tennessee state boundary.
So that’s that’s his story. Now I’ll just close it with if I come back if you get more people.
I’ll come back and do the groundwater conflict in Georgia which is uh saltwater tree intrusion along the
coast. Um the savannah river site is the contaminants that worry about those
contaminants coming into Georgia and then the agricultural pumping effects on the stream flow down in the southwest
okino swamp issue with the mining down there. So, uh,
thank you. And, uh, any questions?
Any questions for John?
Well, you know,
people once you got
Once the problem came to
Rep.
Okay. My question is he was investigating
legislate.
Yeah.
Well, you know, we talk about West and that’s crazy. I mean, you have
California Riverse
California
grandfather
California. Okay, sure.
You know that the Colorado River
is no
question. Oh no. Okay. Since you’ve been involved
in this thing, how do always
like what other ways people
like in the ACF they actually formed
and they all got together and they tried to work it out
came up with some of course legisl
United States.
Do you think United States?
They’re saying that
I guess
water. negotiate
treat. question.
I have not really seen anything.
I don’t know.
issues. I guess I’ll say something uh I’ll say
something in that. Okay. Uh data center issues. There’s too
many to go through and uh it’s it’s late and it’s Friday night. But uh I I feel I
um this is annoying. Um but we can always make more electricity.
Water’s a finite resource and so when these data centers are going into towns
um like first they think about the electricity and then they freak out
because they make this deal and then they go to the water utility and like you said it’s a very regulated right
like each town gets x number of mega gallons per day and like all the stuff
all the way down the rivers and then if a data center comes in and it’s going to take like
50% of that aotment like what happens? And so that’s really where these the
water issues are coming in on the data centers right now is the the public water works are like wait what? Um so
something’s got to get I guess is really because we’re not going to change the state line to the Tennessee. Um
so if that’s our long-term plan I’m very concerned like that that’s not the but
there is There is a a resource management like special committee right now in the general assembly and they are
looking exactly at that and and a legislator actually was like hey we’ve done a really good job at regulating
like and and sharing among crops cities and he’s like what we don’t have right
now because we never thought of doing it and what we need to do now is do the same sort of long-term planning around
industry and who gets like who gets water. So that’s what’s going to start happening
maybe.
You mentioned the Colorado River. Didn’t he screw Mexico over in the 194
deals with
I said
by the time we got
All right. Well, thank you, John. Really appreciate it. Thank you everybody for coming and uh yeah, we’ll see you at our
next event. We’re going to see you, John, at the next event. It’s going to happen.