New water conservation laws signed by Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue on Tuesday will help reduce consumption but likely will do little to resolve the issues that threaten the Atlanta metropolitan area’s future access to water. The state still must settle long-standing quarrels with Florida and Alabama before it can properly address the state’s need for water. That, at the moment, seems an unlikely prospect.
Talks between the governors of the three states are almost moribund. That’s understandable. Mr. Perdue might want talks to move forward, but his counterparts have other interests at the moment. Alabama is embroiled in a legislative brouhaha over gambling and Florida’s governor is running for a U.S. Senate seat. Discussion of the water problem, it seems, will wait.
Delay is harmful to Georgia. A federal judge ruled last year that Atlanta has little right to draw drinking water from Lake Lanier, currently the metro region’s main water source. The decision supported arguments by Florida and Alabama that Georgia has been illegally reducing flow to those states. Resolution of the issue is pressing.
The judge said that if a tri-state water agreement isn’t signed by July 2012, he would limit Atlanta’s withdrawals from Lanier to 1970s levels when the region needed much less water than it requires now. Atlanta and Georgia would be hard-pressed to sustain growth if access to water was restricted.
The new laws show that Georgia will take action to conserve water. Trouble is, neither the new measures — which update building codes and establish outdoor watering restrictions — nor measures seeking relief introduced in Congress by the state’s senators are sufficient to make up the likely shortfall in water should the judge reduce access to Lake Lanier. Much more is needed.