Human Life Now No More Important Than Sturgeons

That is the message that the federal government and the Army Corps of Engineers offered in response to questions raised about why they continued to release water from Lake Lanier, the main source of water for the 4 million+ residents of metro Atlanta.

In the spring of 2006, the corps began releasing billions of gallons of additional water from Lanier and the other federal reservoirs on the Chattahoochee to assist fewer than 10 federally protected Gulf sturgeon fish in laying their eggs.

The northern part of Georgia has been experiencing drought conditions, according to this report for a couple of years, but which became painfully apparent at the end of last year and we are still struggling to recover. We are at Mother Natures mercy in this regard. While portions of the state are getting plenty of rainfall and their sources of water have recovered Lake Lanier still remains critical. For some reason while the rest of the state is getting soaked and the lakes and rivers are recovering Lake Lanier is not. Part of that reason is that we are under federal mandates to release a certain amount of water every day to go downstream for Florida. Yes Florida. The state that is surrounded by water on three sides and home to second largest source of fresh water in the United States, Lake Okeechobee.

Lake Okeechobee is at the center of South Florida's regional water management system, and is located in south-central Florida. The massive lake is a 730 square mile, relatively shallow lake with an average depth of 9 feet (2.7 meters), and is the second-largest freshwater lake located wholly within the continental United States, second only to Lake Michigan. Lake Okeechobee's drainage basin covers more than 4,600 square miles (11,913 km2).

But there is plenty more in the story of how the Atlanta area continues to suffer through water shortages while all of our neighbors continue accusing Georgia of being stingy in sharing our resources.

But when the corps' sent copious amounts of water down to Florida for the prehistoric fish and several types of threatened and endangered freshwater mussels, with very little scientific data to support the need for the additional water, Gov. Sonny Perdue and state Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch protested, to no avail.

In a letter to the corps in May 2006, Couch foreshadowed Lanier's precipitous drop to levels not seen since the lake was filling in the 1950s and warned "draining Lake Lanier to such a low level could cause serious harm throughout the [Chattahoochee] Basin in 2006 and for years to come."

Lake Lanier is a man made lake, so while we had the foresight to try and build a water basin for northern Georgia, we now have to share that with a far larger group then it was ever intended for, and I am pretty sure when the plans were drawn up lake Lanier they didn't include sending water downstream to protect fish and mussels for the folks in Florida.
Pictures of our drought here.