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Georgia Declares A Drought Emergency, Seeks Help

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The Associated Press

Published: October 21, 2007

CUMMING, Ga. - With water supplies rapidly shrinking during a drought of historic proportions, Gov. Sonny Perdue declared a state of emergency Saturday for the northern third of Georgia and asked President Bush to declare it a major disaster area.
Georgia officials warn that Lake Lanier, a 38,000-acre reservoir that supplies more than 3 million residents with water, is less than three months from depletion. Smaller reservoirs are dropping even lower.

Perdue asked the president to exempt Georgia from complying with federal regulations that dictate the amount of water released from Georgia's reservoirs to protect federally protected mussel species downstream.

'We need to cut through the tangle of unnecessary bureaucracy to manage our resources prudently, so that in the long term, all species may have access to life-sustaining water,' Perdue said.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Perdue's request will be reviewed.

'In the meantime, we have already begun drafting interim rules to use procedures and flexibility to address the endangered species requirements, and the Army Corps has started the process of revising the operations manual for the river basin,' Perino said.

On Friday, Perdue's office asked a federal judge to force the Army Corps of Engineers to curb the amount of water it drains from Georgia reservoirs into streams in Alabama and Florida.

More than a billion gallons flow downstream from the north Georgia lake every day, much of it flowing southwest to Alabama and eventually to Florida. The corps bases its water releases on two requirements: the minimum flow needed to operate a coal-fired power plant in Florida and mandates to protect two mussel species in a Florida river.
Georgia lawmakers say the law has been exploited by its neighbors as a tool to draw more water from Georgia's lakes at a time when the region is suffering from an exceptional drought.

'We've learned from this what a blunt weapon the Endangered Species Act has become,' said Rep. John Linder, a Republican from Duluth. 'We need to understand this lake was created not for mussels but for people.'

More than a quarter of the Southeast is covered by an 'exceptional' drought - the National Weather Service's worst drought category.

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