$2 billion straw to Atlanta

Piping 250 million gallons of water from the Tennessee River to Atlanta is one of the options an advisory panel could recommend to Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue as early as Friday.

The pipeline from Tennessee is just one of several options the Georgia Water Contingency Task Force is considering, but the state has — for the first time — put a price tag on the project.

The thirsty city is eyeing a daily drink that’s five times the amount of water Chattanooga uses each day.

A spokesman for Gov. Perdue’s office said tapping the Tennessee would cost an estimated $2.2 billion in capital expenses and $98 million in annual operating costs. The state also estimates four to five years of pre-construction work and the same to build a pump and pipeline.

The task force is charged with developing a “fact-based action plan” for the state to use if a federal judge’s ruling stands and most of Atlanta is weaned off Lake Lanier water by 2012.

“What you’re going to see on there is 40 or 50 different options,” Gov. Perdue’s spokesman Bert Brantley said Friday. “We haven’t even gotten to narrowing down the options yet.”

Officials in Tennessee said they’d happily help winnow the list. Gov. Phil Bredesen; U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.; and U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., on Friday restated their opposition to the idea of Georgia tapping the Tennessee River.

“We’re going to protect the water resources of Tennessee with every ounce of our energy,” Rep. Wamp said.

Contingency task force co-chairman Tim Lowe, CEO of Lowe Engineers, said nothing has been decided, but Mr. Brantley said the original plan was for the group to make its recommendations Friday. Members said they had been told to vote for their preferred options in an online poll.

According to information given to the members, metro Atlanta could face a shortfall of 350 million gallons per day by 2020 if it’s not allowed to use Lanier.

A pipeline into the Tennessee River ranks as a relatively expensive but high-volume option, according to the data.

A desalination plant treating ocean water near Savannah would yield huge amounts of water but, at a cost of $13.7 billion to build, would dwarf the expense of other methods.

Conservation methods, on the other hand, are far less expensive but would not save enough water to solve the problem, according to the data.

One option would include tapping into the Chattahoochee River at West Point Lake on the Alabama line near LaGrange, where task force member Joe Maltese lives.

Mr. Maltese said he and others are concerned about shipping water to Atlanta, but the region would likely have to give up some water if it kept the thirsty capital from drying up.

“I don’t think folks in Chattanooga or LaGrange can afford to see a weakened Atlanta economy,” he said. “We just can’t.”

Task force member Pierre Howard, president of the Georgia Conservancy, said he was against taking water from one area and giving it to another whether that be the Tennessee River, West Point or at Lake Hartwell on the South Carolina border as another option would dictate.

“What you’re doing is depriving one group of people of an economic future to supply another,” he said.

Mr. Howard said many of the listed options did not come from task force discussions and he thinks other agendas might be pushed behind the scenes.

“I would be shocked if task force members had made (all of) those recommendations,” he said.