Will water war ruling lessen or increase thirst for conservation?

There’s no way to spin it: Last week’s U.S. Appeals Court ruling on the tri-state “water war” was a huge win for anyone interested in the Atlanta region’s economic growth. Property owners, prospective employers and public officials can now make decisions about the future without factoring in the prospect that the big spigot from Lake Lanier will run dry as soon as next summer.

But does the ruling resolve North Georgia’s impending water crisis? In short, no way. It gives us a just bit more breathing room to plan figure out how to use the water available more efficiently.

“Our water resources are finite,” as Atlanta Regional Commission Environmental Director Pat Stephens put it in an e-mail. “Using them wisely and efficiently is essential to having the water we will need in the future.”

Water supply remains the surest sustainable development challenge for metro Atlanta. And at the root of that challenge is an unavoidable problem: There are too many demands being placed on North Georgia’s relatively small rivers to quench our growing needs and the needs of downstream users over the next couple of decades.

It’s important to recognize the magnitude of Georgia’s court victory. The three-judge panel didn’t just reverse last year’s ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, which Magnuson himself described as “draconian.” It overturned a basic assumption in the two-decade-long dispute.

For years — even when it appeared to be siding with North Georgia in the tri-state dispute — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assumed that Congress hadn’t intended that Lake Lanier be used to supply metro Atlanta with water. But the Appeals Court judges found Congress always had intended just that. Their basis for that ruling was hidden in plain sight: The 1946 law authorizing the dam mentioned supplying metro Atlanta with water as one of the project’s purposes.

Now, the onus is on the Corps instead of on metro Atlanta. Georgia officials need not beg and pray that neighboring Florida and Alabama agree by next July to let metro communities continue to take water out of Lake Lanier — as Magnuson’s ruling would have required. Instead, the Corps has a year to come up with the plan to divvy up the water fairly.

All that said, however, short of getting into the nuclear fusion business, the Corps can’t create more water. And there was no guarantee in the ruling that metro Atlanta would get more water than its already grabbing from Lake Lanier under interim agreements.

Stephens and other local officials say the North Georgia Water Planning District, which includes metro Atlanta, already has put in place the nation’s most comprehensive, mandatory regional conservation programs. Those efforts — including toilet and showerhead efficiency requirements for new homes that go into effect next year — surely strengthen Georgia’s position in interstate lawsuits and in Corps negotiations.

More steps toward that direction surely would strengthen the region’s position even more. Among the possibilities: extending plumbing efficiencies to resold homes; steepening discount pricing for businesses that use water more efficiency; and more work on leaky sewer pipes.

Another water saving measure that’s barely been tapped — rainwater harvesting – happens to be the topic at this week’s Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable (for which Green Building Chronicle is a sponsor). One of the speakers at that event, Bob Drew of Ecovie Rainwater Collection Systems, told me he plans to make a case at Friday’s event that “rainwater collection could supply 100 million gallons a day” to the metro area within about 10 years. But it would take the sort of incentives, ordinance changes and loan programs that have spurred rapid adoption of such other building improvements as insulation and solar PV systems.

Who knows? With that sort of outcome, last week’s ruling actually could spur more water conservation. By giving the metro area a bit more time to deal with a water crisis that still hasn’t evaporated, the Appeals Court might have provided an opportunity for communities to put in place incentives, code changes and other programs that will encourage water-saving measures by property owners.