DAHLONEGA, Ga. -- Statistics show Catoosa County uses much less water per person than anywhere else in North Georgia, but local officials don't believe it.
"To me, you've really skewed the numbers," David Ashburn, Walker County coordinator and Coosa-North Georgia Water Planning Council member, said at the council's meeting Wednesday.
Discussing factors ranging from hard-to-find water sources to inconsistent permitting, council members learned immediately that just getting a handle on water-demand forecasts is going to be a complicated task.
Mr. Ashburn called the Catoosa numbers into question, discovering the state's figures don't include water that Catoosa, Walker and Whitfield counties pump in from Tennessee.
Members also found other flaws in the forecast figures developed by entities including the University of Georgia, the Environmental Protection Division and the U.S. Geological Survey. Initial water-use numbers don't take into account water bought and sold between water systems. They also don't count individual agricultural withdrawals of fewer than 100,000 gallons per day.
Charlie Bethel, a council member and Dalton city councilman, said this is a particular concern in Northwest Georgia, where most farms would not top the withdrawal threshold to be counted.
"Collectively, a whole lot of water is being withdrawn," he said. "If we're not taking that into account our numbers aren't accurate."
Representatives from the Soil and Water Conservation Commission noted that the first round of figures showed only 35 acres of irrigated farmland in Floyd County, when actually about 2,000 acres are irrigated.
When the topic turned to waste water, members learned individual county health departments keep septic tank permit data differently, making it complicated to determine waste demands.
"On the surface it seems like an easy thing," said Becky Champion, assistant branch chief with the Environmental Protection Division's Watershed Protection Branch, but all of the information is "in different places."
Keith Coffey, a council member from Catoosa County, said not having better forecast numbers is frustrating, but he noted that similar problems with agricultural water-use numbers discussed at the September meeting led to improved data.
Dr. Champion said the water-demand numbers should be treated as "a first science experiment" and the group is supposed to shoot holes in the figures to refine them for the finished plan.
The group's next meeting will be in late January.
Andy began working at the Times Free Press in July 2008 as a general assignment reporter before focusing on Northwest Georgia and Georgia politics in May of 2009. Before coming to the Times Free Press, Andy worked for the Anniston Star, the Rome News Tribune and the Campus Carrier at Berry College, where he graduated with a communications degree in 2006. He is pursuing a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Tennessee ...
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