Like Commerce, Basin Group Wants Out Of Drought Plan
With two out of three of its indicators showing the drought in decline, the Upper Oconee River Basin Water Authority has joined other local jurisdictions in trying to get out from under Georgia’s drought management plan.
Meeting last Wednesday, the authority voted to ask the Environmental Protection Division to drop the four-county area from the 61 counties where water usage is being dictated by Gov. Sonny Perdue and the EPD.
It expects an answer by April 15.
The authority wants to operate under its own drought management plan — which would put the four counties at a level 2 status, requiring a five-percent reduction in water usage. That management plan, officials note, was approved by the EPD. Currently it is under the state plan at a level four and the governor’s mandate to reduce usage by 10 percent.
A level two status would allow homeowners to resume watering their yards and washing cars on an odd-even-day basis.
The city of Commerce has made a similar request.
The decision is an outgrowth of a March 25 meeting among water system operators and EPD officials in Braselton at which local officials were able to present their cases individually to the EPD.
There, said Gary Dodd, manager of the authority’s Operations Committee, EPD officials confirmed that the 61-county area was created by a line “arbitrarily drawn” by the EPD based on the levels of lakes Lanier and Allatoona.
The group was promised that if it made its request in writing by April 1, the EPD would provide an answer by April 15.
“A lot of cities and counties are requesting to be removed,” Dodd told the authority.
Dodd also said that the EPD concedes that the basin authority’s drought management plan is better than the EPD’s state plan.
Drought responses for the four-county group are determined by the average of three scales. One relates to reservoir level, another to soil moisture and the third to stream flow. Only the stream flow level remains down, and the average of the three suggests that the Upper Oconee area should be in level two of its drought management plan.
In a related move, the authority confirmed an earlier edict issued by the Operations Committee to reduce its restrictions to level three. That requires member counties to show a 10 percent reduction in water usage - which coincides with Gov. Sonny Perdue’s mandate.
Following a lengthy discussion, the authority agreed to use March and April 2007 numbers as the baseline for the reduction.
House Bill 1281
Legislation vesting all control in water management decisions with the state was also a topic of the March 25 meeting, said Dodd. Local water operators argued to the EPD that they are in a better position than the EPD to understand the needs and capabilities of individual water systems - for which EPD has already approved management plans.
“The state approves our drought management plan. Why don’t they allow us to use our plan, which they approved, and which is better than the state’s?” he asked.
Athens Mayor Heidi Davison said her legislators have turned a deaf ear to that position, saying “why should there be different provisions for different areas?”
Jackson County Board of Commissioners Chairman Pat Bell argued that, when considering reductions in usage, a county’s growth rate should be factored in.
“It should be considered,” she said. “We felt like it hadn’t been considered in the past.”
“We did get the EPD to look at the growth,” Dodd countered, “and taking industrial and commercial use out and just using residential.”
