Fighting the Water Wars on a Different Front

By Marsha Walton

The quarter-million people who dash through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport each day may not know it, but they are witnessing some of the most proactive water-saving measures in the region. Travelers there are using new sinks, toilets, and urinals at the world's busiest airport.

"Most people don't jump up and down about toilets, but they will let you know if there are problems," says Charles Marshall, airport utilities manager. As it turns out, what started as routine — fixing a few leaking pipes and some malfunctioning toilets in this enormous transportation hub — led to a much broader airport sustainability management plan, adopted in 2011. The goal: to reduce water use by one-fifth by 2020. The facility is now saving more than 55 million gallons of water a year, achieving 88 percent of that target already.

Other large institutions also have reviewed and retrofitted to conserve water. The Georgia Tech campus has accomplished a 30 percent reduction in water use since 2007, with low-flow fixtures, an irrigation master plan, rainwater collection, and changes in the way water is used in its many laboratories.

Droughts, floods, decaying infrastructure, and a two-decades-long dispute with Alabama and Florida ("Water War, Southern Style," August/September 2012) have all been triggers for conservation, cooperation, and creativity in water use in north Georgia, from airport terminals to breweries to new home construction.

A 2007 drought led to dramatic water restrictions, a state of emergency for the northern third of the state, and a raised consciousness about water conservation.

Municipalities, nongovernmental organizations, and some eclectic alliances of conservationists, power producers, farmers, and fishermen, have all had a hand in changing the trajectory of the Atlanta metro area's water future — sometimes all but ignoring how the state is handling the issue.

Crumbling infrastructure

But it took grave federal action to finally compel massive improvements to the city of Atlanta's water infrastructure. A lack of maintenance from the 1970s through the 1990s resulted in thousands of untreated sewage spills each year.

"In the mid '90s, every single time it rained in Atlanta there was raw sewage and material from bathrooms flowing into tributaries," says Sally Bethea, executive director of the nonprofit Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. "Condoms, toilet paper, and tampons were hanging in trees, and on vegetation next to urban streams. We had a Third World sewer system. And it was impacting public health and property values," says Bethea, who holds a master's degree in city planning from Georgia Tech and is a 30-year veteran of environmental advocacy.

Unrelenting investigations by the local newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, pressure from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the threat of a sewer moratorium finally got repair work started. A moratorium against new sewer connections could have resulted in billions in lost economic benefit to the city.

To settle a lawsuit brought by the EPA, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, and the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, the city faced two consent decrees, ordered by a federal court in 1998 and 1999. They forced the city to address its long-neglected wastewater system.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin (who served from 2002 to 2009) embraced the challenge, earning the endearing nickname "the sewer mayor." She realized a city this big couldn't have long-term economic prosperity without a top-notch water and sewer system. Her successor, Mayor Kasim Reed, continues the improvements.

Atlanta residents are paying for the years of neglect. According to the city auditor's office, Atlanta had the nation's highest water and sewer rates among major metropolitan areas in fiscal 2011. Mayor Reed and the city council plan to maintain current water and sewer rates until 2016.

Civil engineer Jo Ann Macrina took over as Atlanta's commissioner of the Department of Watershed Management in April 2011. The DWM was formed in 2002 to manage drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems. "Some of our infrastructure is over 100 years old. We still have pipes made out of clay and wood," says Macrina. The consent decree reflected the fact that the city neglected its systems, she adds. 

Repairs have included constructing miles of new water mains and replacing many small, corroded pipes filled with decades of sediment. From 2002 to 2008, annual water leak repairs by DWM rose from 750 to 9,600.

Along with tearing up a lot of city streets for those replacements, conservation incentives, rebates, and education programs flourished. Since residential toilet use accounts for one-quarter of home water use, early efforts focused there. "Conservation makes a clear difference," says Macrina.

Residential incentives include a $100 rebate on water bills with installation of toilets that use 1.28 gallons per flush. And the state has declared two sales tax holidays on Water-Sense products, including showerheads, toilets, faucets, and irrigation controllers. WaterSense is an EPA program that promotes water efficiency.

Unintended consequences

But another undertaking by DWM — to improve the efficiency of residential water meters — instead created enormous headaches for both residents and the department. "We installed automated water meter readers between 2007 and 2009. Shortly after that, we were hit with a barrage of complaints," says Macrina. Some monthly bills spiked from less than $100 to thousands of dollars a month.

"People had little confidence in their bills and water meters, so we launched a full-scale investigation of residential meters," she adds. Many meters were repaired and replaced, and in October 2013, the Atlanta city council approved more than $327,000 in customer refunds.

As the meter problem was being addressed, Macrina launched some green infrastructure projects aimed at flood control, financial savings, and, as a bonus, creating pleasant outdoor spaces. "We have new approaches in our long-range plans," she says. "How can we pull all the water disciplines together in a holistic manner, so that drinking water is not separate from stormwater or wastewater?"

The department has accomplished that merger in one showcase project in the city's Old Fourth Ward, near downtown. A new 17-acre park includes a two-acre detention pond that has dramatically reduced neighborhood flooding. Instead of spending $40 million on a conventional design to capture and divert stormwater, DWM spent $26 million for something different: mimicking nature to take care of excess stormwater.

The city, with help from community groups, designed and installed flood protection and stormwater overflow systems, transforming a site that was once contaminated with diesel, lead, and asbestos. A 10-foot waterfall there aerates and recycles the pond water.

Now the park is a popular destination, with a playground, skateboard park, and wildflower meadow near several new apartment complexes. "We gave the community one of the best stormwater capacity relief ponds we could dream of, and one that also increased economic vitality," says Macrina.

The infrastructure improvements are ongoing. In May 2012, Atlanta was granted a 13-year extension to complete its remaining court-ordered sewer work. But it is expected that the volume of sewer spills will have been reduced by 99 percent this year. 

Savings outside the city

So is the rest of the Atlanta metro area living up to serious efforts at water savings?

"Absolutely!" says Katherine Zitsch, manager of natural resources at the Atlanta Regional Commission. "I describe metro Atlanta as one of most aggressive in the country," when it comes to implementing specific conservation measures, she says.

"Through those measures, per capita demand is down 20 percent" in the 15 counties around Atlanta, Zitsch notes. The area includes more than 100 local governments and water utilities. "It's a combination of lots of things: strong public education programs that have created some efficiency changes, like replacement of water-wasting toilets, especially in older homes. Some of it is public awareness, because of the droughts we have suffered," Zitsch says.

In 2000, water authority officials in Clayton County, south of the city, took a hard look at their systems. "When we put a dollar figure on our losses, it opened up our eyes," says Jeff Jones, who has been with the Clayton County Water Authority since 1989. At the time, water losses were approaching 20 percent, meaning $3 to $4 million in lost revenue each month from about 70,000 residential accounts. 

Jones says an investment of about $380,000 in several technologically advanced leak detection systems has made a dramatic difference. The new tools led to more than $2.6 million in recovered water, or about $7.04 for every dollar invested. Sensors that "listen" for leaks can detect problems months or even years before the leak would surface. And the county increased its wetland treatment capacity to reclaim water, which has helped it deal with several droughts.

The changes worked. In 2010, Georgia's Water Stewardship Act required local governments to come up with strict, specific water conservation practices, from outdoor watering restrictions to changes in plumbing codes. Jones says Clayton County got an exemption because it was determined that the county was already operating at close to peak efficiency.

Fast-growing suburban Cobb, Gwinnett, and Douglas counties also have started investing in and upgrading infrastructure that had long been ignored. DeKalb County, however, lags behind. Since 2010 it has been operating its sanitary sewer system under its own Clean Water Act consent decree with the EPA and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. 

Eclectic alliances

The nonprofit Apalachicola, Chattahoochee, Flint Stakeholders was created in 2009 largely because years of lawsuits brought no answers to critical water-sharing issues in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. ACFS is a consortium — made up of governments, universities, chambers of commerce, farm bureaus, corporations, and nonprofits in the three states. Its members look for answers without lawsuits. The group is working on a Sustainable Water Management Plan for the ACF Basin, using scientific modeling and a shared vision process to achieve a solution that works for the diverse interests in the tristate basin.

Still, disputes continue. "The ‘water wars' certainly frame what the Atlanta Regional Commission does," says Zitsch. "We participate in the ACFS group, we work with the Corps [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for setting the flows from Lake Lanier]. But we have to think in the context of not just Georgia, but Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Any discussion about water use is part of a bigger picture, to use it wisely, and return what we can for other users." 

Beyond its initial (and successful) effort to force Atlanta to clean up its water, the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper continues to be a powerful player in protecting and restoring the Chattahoochee River basin. With water testing, education programs, and legal action when needed, the group has stopped hundreds of illegal discharges into the Chattahoochee and its tributaries, and coaxed industries and local governments to comply with clean water laws.

"It's all about the partners," says Mike Meyer, the group's watershed protection specialist. "We have 22 dedicated partner groups, schools, and neighborhoods." CRK volunteers test water collected weekly from more than 40 test sites in rivers and streams in Atlanta and north Georgia. They test for bacteria, including coliform and E. coli, and often have alerted government agencies to pollution problems at very early stages.

CRK helps its members in the business community make positive changes. And water policy director Laura Hartt says it often helps their bottom line. "Fortunately, it is economical and sustainable to do water conservation," says Hartt. "It is orders of magnitude better than building new reservoirs."

Droughts, floods, and more dramatic weather events prompted by climate change are all the more reason to find answers to water problems. "These climatological changes are not going to resolve themselves in court. The best way to deal with this is to get the three stakeholders to agree," says Hartt, who is both a lawyer and scientist. 

Business innovations

Some metro Atlanta businesses are creating campaigns and products to promote long-term water savings. One of them is the SweetWater Brewery, now working with the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper on the "Save the Hooch" campaign.

In a section of their website that includes the slogan "Givin' up our liver to save the river," brewmasters make the connection: "It really boils down to protecting our waterways. Without clean water, good luck brewin' tasty beer!"

The brewery has contributed more than $700,000 to 30 different waterkeepers groups across the Southeast. "We have a really cool following; we want to take that following to respect for the river," says company founder Freddy Bensch, who has a degree in environmental studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Bob Drew, founder of ECOVIE Environmental, is another businessman interested in water conservation. "In 2007 during the drought, I realized at my own home I could capture water and cut down on water bills and get rid of some of the bad effects of the drought. So I quit corporate life to do it!" says Drew, a chemical engineer by training. 

Drew says if more metro Atlanta homes and businesses used rainwater harvesting, this technology could dramatically reduce demand for water from city and county water systems. "I think it is reasonable to expect that . . . we could get 100 million gallons per day from rain harvesting," says Drew.

A lot of Drew's work is educational. There's a high-profile, 1,500-gallon rainwater collection system at an entrance to Turner Field, the Atlanta Braves baseball stadium. It supplies up to 20,000 gallons of water over a baseball season. "It keeps the grass green," says Drew, and prompts a lot of interest and questions from fans.

Ad infinitum?

But no matter how motivated all these conservation efforts may be, the Atlanta metro area's water future is still connected to that long-running, unresolved brawl over who gets how much water in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. In a nutshell: Alabama and Florida politicians claim that metro Atlanta takes too much water from north Georgia river basins, putting the squeeze on downstream users. The Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers merge to form the Apalachicola, in Florida. Each state has seen some victories, with a slight tilt in Georgia's favor in the latest round.

Now there's a new lawsuit. In October 2013, Florida Gov. Rick Scott asked the U.S. Supreme Court to order Georgia to provide more water to his state's collapsing oyster industry, claiming that Peach State water hogs were depriving the oyster beds in Apalachicola Bay of needed supplies of fresh water.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal's office called the move just more "political theater." He cited his state's notable conservation efforts to counter Scott's claims of Georgia's "unmitigated consumption" of fresh water.

The Lake Lanier Association, a nonprofit group that represents many living near the 38,000-acre manmade reservoir, which provides the bulk of the flows, has equal disdain for the Florida governor's latest accusations. "Governor Scott's whines won't turn into water," the group said in a news release.

But the group's executive director does acknowledge that the interstate feud does have a positive side. "I think we have made progress in the 20 years of the water wars," says Joanna Cloud. "Those big droughts, as much as I hated seeing them, raised [the public] consciousness" about the need to conserve.

What's ahead?

Atlanta watershed commissioner Macrina says she looks forward to meeting the city's future water needs. "What makes the city of Atlanta different than lots of cities around the country is that we still have a growing population," she says. That makes water a top priority. 

"Water, clean water, adds to the quality of life for the city of Atlanta. It is still seen as a green city, a vibrant city, with the busiest airport in the world," says Macrina.

Are things better than they were 10 or 20 years ago? Absolutely, says the CRK's Sally Bethea. But there are challenges ahead, too, from dealing with farm runoff from huge rural chicken and pig farms, to suburban counties' attempts to build new reservoirs, to whatever the next chapter reveals in the water wars.

Marsha Walton is a science and environment reporter and producer. She worked with CNN's Science and Technology unit for more than a decade, and has produced stories for the PBS show This American Land, the National Science Foundation, and the websites Mother Nature Network and Women's eNews. She lives in Atlanta. 

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Images: Top — Chattahoochee Riverkeeper staff member and volunteers test water sample weekly. Photo by Marsha Walton. Middle — The two-acre detention pond at historic Fourth Ward Park combines beauty and Utility. Since its completion in 2011, neighborhood flooding decreased dramatically. Photo by KiefelPhotography.com/ The Trust for Public Lands. Bottom — 'Save the Hooch' is a campaign by SweetWater Brewery and the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. Photo courtesy SweetWater Brewing Company.