Atlanta only has 3 months of water

Atlanta's grown by like a million people since the year 2000 and they still only relied on the same two surface water sources. If they had planned for a drought they could have enacted water conservation measures earlier and diversified their supply to include groundwater sources.

The city I live in has grown by probably 20,000 people in that same time frame, but our overall water use is lower than it was because of conservation and landscaping that doesn't use much water.

YOur city is clever and can see the big picture. My state is retarded and even after numerous warnings about the lack of water continues to do business as usual. SAD.

Well we live in a desert so that probably motivates them somewhat. There's a limit on how much we can grow. One nearby city thought they were about to run out of water (turns out groundwater supplies were more than they thought), but they did just finish a new desalination facility to treat brackish groundwater.

The last time we had a water shortage in Ireland a team of all the most brilliant minds in the world of politics got together and came up with a solution.

Dilute it.

North georgia is now in a state of emergency.

https://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/20/georgia.drought/index.html

it's interesting that they blame the US Fish and Wildlife service and the Army Corp of Engineers for this problem, rather than looking at their own wasteful usage. once they restrict the amount of water flowing from the lake, there will be a huge ecological impact, and people will complain that the USFW doesn't care about endangered species. what a messy no-win situation.

The article also neglects to mention that the amount of water released is required for the power plants to operate. They can't operate with less water than the army is releasing. Areas downstream might also rely on the water release for their own supplies.

and you know what that means. the electicity has to come from somewhere...and if they can't get it through the existing hydro plants, doesn't take a genius to figure out what will be used instead. could the Atlanta city government have been any more short sighted?

In the UK we have hose pipe bans, when its been really bad even car washes have to close down. The last very bad drought we had i was very young but i do remember on the TV all the commercials telling people to bathe thier kids together, take a shower instead of a bath, wash all your dishes in one go in the sink not a dishwasher, make sure your laundry load is full, wash a baby in the sink not the bath There are plenty of things people can do to conserve water during drought.

Sadly nowadays people dont seem to care so much, they are happy to ignore the bans and waste water. They shift the onus of responsibility onto the water board rather than taking any personal responsibility over the use of thier water. Unless of course they are on a water meter, then its a very different story.