Saving water costing Coweta

 

By Sarah Fay Campbell | The Times-Herald

Conserving water is a good thing. No doubt about it.

But it sure can hurt a water system’s bottom line.

The Coweta County Water and Sewerage Authority has been told to expect a 25 percent rate increase on the water it buys from Griffin, because of decreased water use.  Under a contract signed in 1999, Coweta is obligated to buy a certain amount of water from Griffin each day. That amount increases each year through 2025. General Manager Ellis Cadenhead was recently informed that a major rate increase would be coming. Griffin must submit an itemized list outlining the justification for the following year’s rate by Dec. 1.

Under the contract, Coweta pays Griffin its actual cost for producing the water, including operation of its system, debt service on the reservoir, payroll and the like, plus a 20 percent markup.

Griffin, like Coweta and Newnan, was mandated to cut its water use by 10 percent because of the drought. The Georgia Environmental Protection Division put out that mandate last spring in an effort to cope with a historic drought. The EPD also imposed severe water restrictions on water systems throughout north Georgia.

But the 10 percent mandate and the water restrictions weren’t based on whether or not a particular system had a water shortage.

And none of the three did.

So far, Cadenhead said, the authority has lost about $80 million worth of water sales because of the watering restrictions.

In essence, systems that have plenty of water are being punished because Atlanta and other north-metro counties were facing the possibility of running out of water.

When the EPD announced a few months ago that it would consider relaxing water restrictions for systems that don’t depend on Lake Lanier, “we were the first county to file,” Cadenhead said. “We had ours up there on the desk waiting for them.”

The Coweta system is self-sufficient — it receives no funding other than the bills that customers pay.

Though water usage is down, the cost to produce water has gone up. In the past year, the cost of treatment chemicals has skyrocketed. Alum is up 50 percent over last year, Cadenhead said. Lime is up 10.5 percent, potassium permanganate is up 24.5 percent, salt — which is used to make chlorine — is up 25.6 percent, and phosphate is up 60 percent.

In addition, many of the costs to run a water system are fixed and don’t depend on the number of gallons sold.

Read on here.

Army Corps to let more water stay in Lake Lanier through April

 

By Sarah Fay Campbell | The Times-Herald

The Corps announced that it had determined the reduction in flow would not have “any long-term significant environmental or human impacts.”

The lake is currently more than 18 feet below full pool.

The decision comes as the Corps is working on updating the “operations manual” for the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint basin. It was the update of the manuals 18 years ago that touched off what has become known as the “tri-state water wars.”

Lanier reached record lows last year, thanks to a historic drought and releases from Buford Dam meant to maintain certain flows into the Apalachicola River below Lake Seminole. The flows were needed to protect endangered mussels and sturgeon in the river.

But for most of 2008, the water flowing over the Buford Dam had nothing to do with endangered species, Alabama, or Florida.

Though north Georgia is still in a a drought, there has been enough rainfall in the southern part of the basin to take care of the flows into the Apalachicola.

The water coming out of Lanier was only to keep minimum stream flows in the Chattahoochee between Lanier and West Point Lake.

Certain water levels are essential to dilute the millions of gallons of treated sewage that are put into the river every day from metro Atlanta.

The Corps will reevaluate the reduction in flows in the spring. Higher flows will almost certainly be necessary in the summer months to protect water quality.