Thursday, October 18, 2007
News Perdue sues Army Corps, still thinks it's all about mussels and fish
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 5:04 PM
Gov. Sonny Perdue hollered the news from his Tokyo hotel yesterday that the state will seek a court order against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, or USACE, requiring the agency to stop releasing water from Buford Dam at Lake Lanier. Maybe it’s jet lag, maybe it’s bad sushi, but the governor’s not making a lick of sense. From the release …
"The Corps’ nonsensical action to further release vital water from Georgia’s already depleted federal reservoirs must not stand," said Governor Sonny Perdue. "There is simply no scientific justification to operate these reservoirs in this manner during a historic drought like the one we are experiencing. The Corps’ current operation of the basin will only cause greater harm to the very endangered species they claim to be protecting. If, however, the Corps is determined to make this ill-advised choice in favor of mussel and sturgeon species over Georgia citizens, then I must do all within my power to protect our citizens during this devastating drought." (Emphasis added.)
Mussels make good punching bags, Governor, but they didn’t ask to be dragged into this fight, and hardly are they the crux of the issue. Funny how — infuriatingly mind-blowing, actually — nowhere in the press release does Perdue mention the two power plants or numerous businesses downstream that also rely on the Lanier water releases to operate. In Perdue Country, it’s all about the marine life and the sheer preposterousness of someone valuing a fish over the life of a Georgian. How dare you! (rattles fist, places hand on saber)
But it's much more than that. The mussels and sturgeon have been unknowingly cast -- they have tiny brains and don't understand English, after all -- as the scapegoat and the necessary casualty in this debacle. The Corps has been fingered as the inane custodians of the resource. Perdue is the People's Champion. And I'm the guy sitting at a computer bashing his head against the keyboard with every drought-related press release the governor's office sends out. But there's a lot of things going on in between the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Lanier.
In a phone interview last night with Maj. Ronald Payne, deputy commander of the USACE Mobile District, the office which oversees Lake Lanier, he said, "If we shut down Lake Lanier, we’d have to shut down a lot of operations downstream." Which in turn would shut down those who rely on those operations, a trickle-down domino effect of huge proportions. Much like Lake Lanier and our region are dependent on rain, the operations downstream, for the most part, are dependent on Lanier.
"Litigation is never how I choose to deal with issues, but the Corps has left us no choice. While the Corps’ letter indicated that it will work towards a process to address our concerns, Georgia is out of time." (Emphasis again added.)
We’re coming close, but we’re not that close, according to Payne. Barring a complete lack of "rain, snow, dew, anything," he said, Lanier’s storage pool has roughly 112 days of supply left. Should we receive the extreme weather that was rumored yesterday – and trumpeted with glee on this blog – we’ll buy ourselves some more time and water. If the water level drops below Buford Dam’s gates, pipes would have to be lowered into the supply. Payne doesn’t make light of the situation – "it’s very serious and requires careful attention," he said – but he added that residents should not be stocking up on bottled water anytime soon. And what if the Corps were to just all of a sudden close the gate and appease the governor and the talk radio warriors who advocate sending in the National Guard, and simply stop releasing water from Buford Dam? Well, Payne or his commander could be hauled off in handcuffs. And there’s always the risk of being sued. But the Corps knows all about that.
So is it political posturing by the governor or a classic case of head-in-the-sand ostrich-itis? The bill seeking to suspend the Endangered Species Act introduced to Congress by the Georgia delegation still has to go through the legislative motions. After that there’s still the interim operating plan, or IOP, under which the Corps is operating the releases. What is frightening is the apparent mind-set of many involved, including the politicians and residents, that should the ESA be suspended, all of a sudden things can return to normal – watering lawns, man-made snow, those heady days of water, water, everywhere.
If the skies don't open for us, this whole mussels mess is just the first in what may be a rather nasty series of events.
Comments (9)
Showing 1-9 of 9
This article gets high marks for smugness, low marks for accuracy. Try a little reading and critical thinking before you act as if you are an authority on water management. Jeez.
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And the inaccuracies in the article are...? Don't leave me hangin', bro. I'm a specifics hungry man.
For one thing, the article doesn't point out that gov perdue is a redneck cretin
The water problem Atlanta faces is not an ESA problem; it's a development problem, one that's had little, if any, real oversight ... too many people, too liitle water ... Has the state done anything to address the reality? ... hardly ... As usual, the politicians would like to blame anyone but their own ineptitude ...
Why are they using water from a man made lake as a water supply? That was not the original purpose of the lake. The lake was created to prevent flooding DOWNSTREAM and to provide hydroelectricity for downstream dams, not to act as a water supply for Georgia. It seems that the real problem is that they do not have their own water supply.
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