A Deep Dive into ATL’s Water Supply
When astronomers gaze into their telescopes to search the crevices of the universe for habitable planets, they are hoping to find one thing: water. Water is one of the most important elements necessary to sustain life. We use it for everything. Try to name at least one essential activity you do every day that doesn’t require water in some shape or form. Pretty difficult, right? Because water is an integral part of our lives, local governments are constantly developing strategies to sustainably manage and conserve it. This fact is especially true for the city of Atlanta. Did you know that the city’s emergency water reserve has only enough for three days? How is this even possible, you ask? What are city officials doing to address this? To answer these questions, we need to first talk a little bit about Georgia’s watersheds.
Watersheds. What is a watershed? A watershed is an area of land that drains all the water from rainfall and snowmelt into a common body of water. If this definition isn’t quite clear, think of an open upside-down umbrella. The rain falls on the surface of the inside of the umbrella, slides down the ribs to the center near the handle, and creates a pool of water. In this case, the upside-down umbrella acts like a watershed and collects the water into a central place. Additionally, like the ribs of an umbrella, watersheds are composed of networks of smaller waterways like creeks, rivers, or lakes that ultimately drain into larger bodies of water. They also vary in size ranging from small puddles to huge tributaries that span several states. Georgia has fourteen major watersheds. However, for our purposes, we will discuss two: the Chattahoochee and Coosa.
(Photo Source: University of Central Florida)
Now, that we’ve learned about watersheds. It’s time to get back to Atlanta’s problem. When I think about Atlanta’s water dilemma, it reminds me of baseball. Baseball is a game of strikes and home runs. Let’s first examine Atlanta’s strikes by identifying the conditions that contribute to the city’s limited water supply. The first strike is its location. The metropolitan area isn’t in the most water rich area. In fact, almost all of the metro-Atlanta region’s water supply is from surface water, while only a small percentage comes from groundwater. Therefore, the region relies heavily on the reservoirs (A reservoir is a place where water is stored.) Lake Allatoona and Lake Lanier in the Coosa and Chattahoochee river basins, respectively. Eighty-seven percent of city’s water supply is from these reservoirs, primarily Lake Lanier.
Additionally, these reservoirs are located near the source of the river basins or headwaters and they travel down and across the state borders of Alabama and Florida. The river basins are Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT) and Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (AFC). All three states share the AFC river basin, while only Georgia and Alabama share the ACT river basin. Over the years, there has been a lot of debate, conflict, and litigation around how water in the river basins should be allocated and used. The clash between these states is commonly known as the “Tri-State Water Wars.” Technically, each state has water rights to the basins. However, Atlanta must limit the amount it takes from the reservoirs to avoid significantly decreasing the water flow in Alabama and Florida. STRIIIKE ONE!
(Photo Source: Atlanta Regional Commission)
Make sure to come back for my next post where I’ll talk about Atlanta’s other two strikes and some of its home runs. Have something to add or thoughts of your own on ATL’s water supply? Leave a comment below or on our Facebook or Instagram page! See ya next time!
About the Author
Sydney-Alyce is GreenATLiens’ Water ATLien and resident ecologist. She’s passionate about approaching problems through an ecological and sustainable framework. You can follow her on Instagram at @thesoulleaf. The full bio of Sydney-Alyce and all GreenATLiens content writers will be coming soon!
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