Water Supply Issues
Army involvement in works "of a civil nature," including water resources, goes back almost to the origins of the U.S. Over the years, as the Nation's needs have changed, so have the Army's Civil Works missions. Water resources controlled by the Corps of Engineers are used for navigation, hydroelectric power generation, and recreation as well as water supply. The Corps first got involved in water supply in the 1850s, when they built the Washington DC aqueduct. Today USACE reservoirs supply water to nearly 10 million people in 115 cities. In the drier parts of the Nation, water from Corps' reservoirs is also used for agriculture.
Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have been wrangling over how to allocate water from the Chattahoochee watershed for years as metro Atlanta's population has doubled since 1980. In October 2007, the governor of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, indicating an impending crisis with the water supply from Lake Lanier, declared a state of emergency and confirmed that the state would sue the US Army Corps of Engineers who administers the water supply for Atlanta. The Corps acknowledged that they made a mistake in 2006 when they relied on a faulty gauge to measure Lake Lanier's level by nearly two feet. This mistake led to an overestimation of the amount of water that left in the lake and the Corps accidentally released about 22 billion US gallons (83,000,000 m3) of water: enough to supply metro Atlanta's needs for about a month and a half.
However, USACE's analysis of the situation differed from the Governor's, indicating that even without rain for nine months, water supplies would still be adequate. The corps sent a letter to Perdue assessing the situation and pointing out that they are "not going to run out any time soon," In mid-November 2007, the Corps made adjustments to its water retention policies to keep more water in the Chattahoochee watershed. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service expedited its study of an interim drought plan submitted two weeks ago by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and concluded that freshwater mussels and sturgeon in Florida and Alabama—kept alive by water from Georgia's Chattahoochee watershed under federal law—will not be jeopardized under the plan. The governors of the three states indicated that they would continue to meet and negotiate.
Other states and tribal nations have also been involved with or had concerns about how the Corps manages water supply, to the extent that Congress or the courts have often gotten involved in trying to mediate disputes.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Army Corps Of Engineers Civil Works Controversies
Famous quotes containing the words water, supply and/or issues:
“Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Artistic inspiration ignores the law of supply and demand.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The current flows fast and furious. It issues in a spate of words from the loudspeakers and the politicians. Every day they tell us that we are a free people fighting to defend freedom. That is the current that has whirled the young airman up into the sky and keeps him circulating there among the clouds. Down here, with a roof to cover us and a gasmask handy, it is our business to puncture gasbags and discover the seeds of truth.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)