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Atlanta has no backup plan if reservoir goes dry
BY GREG BLUESTEIN The Associated Press

   ATLANTA — With the South in the grip of an epic drought and its largest city holding less than a 90-day supply of water, officials are scrambling to deal with the worstcase scenario: What if Atlanta’s faucets really do go dry?
   So far, no real backup plan exists. And there are no quick fi xes among suggested solutions, which include piping water in from rivers in neighboring states, building more regional reservoirs, setting up a statewide recycling system or even desalinating water from the Atlantic Ocean.
   “It’s amazing that things have come to this,” said Ray Wiedman, owner of an Atlanta landscaper business. “Everybody knew the growth was coming. We haven’t had a plan for all the people coming here?”
   Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue seems to be pinning his hopes on a two-pronged approach: urging water conservation and reducing water flowing out of federally controlled lakes.
   Perdue’s office on Friday asked a Florida federal judge to force the Army Corps of Engineers to curb the amount of water draining from Georgia reservoirs into Alabama and Florida. And Georgia’s environmental protection director is drafting proposals for more water restrictions.
   But that may not be enough to stave off the water crisis. More than a quarter of the Southeast is covered by an “exceptional” drought — the National Weather Service’s worst drought category. The Atlanta area, with a population of 5 million, is smack in the middle of the affected region, which extends like a dark cloud over most of Tennessee, Alabama and the northern half of Georgia, as well as parts of North and South Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia.
   State officials warn that Lake Lanier, a 38,000-acre north Georgia reservoir that supplies more than 3 million residents with water, is already less than three months from depletion. Smaller reservoirs are dropping even lower, forcing local governments to consider rationing.
   State water managers say there is more water available in the lake’s reserves. But tapping into it would require the use of barges, emergency pumps and longer water lines. And some lawmakers fear if the lake is drained that low, it may be impossible to refill.
   The Corps, which manages the water in the region, stresses there’s no reason to think Atlanta will soon run out of water.
   “We’re so far away from that, nobody’s doing a contingency plan,” said Major Daren Payne, the deputy commander of the Corps’ Mobile office. “Quite frankly, there’s enough water left to last for months. We’ve got a serious drought, there’s no doubt about it, anytime you deplete your entire storage pool and tap into the reserve.”
   But, he said, any calls to stockpile bottled water would be “very premature.”
   Still, some academics and politicians are proposing contingency plans in case the situation worsens.
   Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said the region should explore piping in additional sources of water — possibly from the Tennessee or Savannah rivers. She even suggested desalinating sea water from Georgia’s Atlantic coast.
   “We need to look beyond our borders,” she said.
   Former Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat who was defeated in 2002, told reporters this week that he had planned to offer grants to fi x leaks that waste millions of gallons of water each year. He also said he planned to build three new state reservoirs in north and west Georgia to help insulate the state from a future water crisis. But those plans died when he left office.
   “Los Angeles added 1 million people without increasing their water supply,” he told reporters. “And if Los Angeles can do it, I’ll tell you Georgia can.”
   It seems the idea of building state reservoirs is gaining steam in the Legislature as Georgia’s battle with the Corps over federal reservoirs heats up.
   Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said he favors building more regional reservoirs shared by multiple communities to harness the 50 trillion gallons of water that fall over Georgia each year.
   “You can see that if we can just manage the rainfall and utilize that and make sure that we have abundant storage for it, we can take care of our needs well into the future,” said Cagle, a Republican from Gainesville, the largest city on Lake Lanier.
   Some academics say Georgia should start using more “purple water” — waste water that is partially treated and can be used for irrigation, fi re fighting and uses other than drinking. That would conserve lake water and help replenish the water-supply system.
   Such measures could make Georgia “drought-proof,” said Todd Rasmussen, a professor of hydrology and water resources at the University of Georgia.
   “People have got to start thinking in this direction,” said Rasmussen. “You can’t wear out water. It’s clearly an opportunity that needs to be explored.”
   The drought has led to extreme conservation measures.
   Virtually all outdoor watering across was banned across the northern half of the state, restaurants were asked to serve water only at a customer’s request and the governor called on Georgians to take shorter showers. Carol Couch, the state’s environmental director, said it’s “very likely” new limits on water usage are needed.
   Scorching summer temperatures and a drier-than-normal hurricane season fueled the drought. State climatologist David Stooksbury said it will take months of above average rainfall to replenish the system. He is now predicting the drought could worsen if “La Nina” conditions develop and bring little winter rainfall.
   “I tell people we need 40 days and 40 nights,” he said with a sigh.

JOHN BAZEMORE/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Exposed lake bed and beached boat docks are shown at Lake Lanier in Cumming, Ga., on Oct. 12. Rivers throughout the Southeast are turning to dust, raising concerns about drinking water supplies.

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Las Vegas Water Battle: 'Crops vs. Craps'
by Howard Berkes


Enlarge Howard Berkes, NPR
Freshly cut alfalfa in Snake Valley, Utah, is starkly green next to the brown and unwatered desert nearby.





Lindsay Mangum, NPR
Source: Southern Nevada Water Authority  


A Series Overview
In a weeklong series Morning Edition explores some of the conflicts that arise as different groups of people seek to maintain their hold on — or to get a hold of — more water in the arid West and other regions of the country.


Struggling over Water



Enlarge Howard Berkes, NPR
Dean Baker, who ranches in Utah and Nevada, gazes at a waterless trough once used by sheep and wild horses. Baker is convinced that the proposed groundwater pumping for Las Vegas would leave many troughs, springs and wells short of water.




Enlarge Howard Berkes, NPR
Pivot sprinklers in Snake Valley, Nev., make the desert blossom with alfalfa, which is later baled as hay and fed to dairy and beef cows.




Enlarge Howard Berkes, NPR
Rancher Dean Baker drives 75 miles to get from one of his cattle herds to another in Snake Valley, Nevada and Utah.




Enlarge Howard Berkes, NPR
Cecil Garland climbs into his swather, which he uses to cut hay on his Callao, Utah, ranch.




Enlarge Howard Berkes, NPR
Callao, Utah, a settlement of five ranches and 35 people, is 50 miles from the nearest paved road and 90 miles from groceries and gas.




Enlarge Howard Berkes, NPR
A desert spring emanates from rocks in Snake Valley, Nev.


Morning Edition, June 12, 2007 · Cecil Garland thought he was getting as far away as possible when he bought a fledgling ranch in Callao, Utah, more than 30 years ago.

Callao, with its five ranches and 35 people, is 50 dusty miles from a paved road, 90 miles from a gas station or grocery store, and about 300 miles from Las Vegas.

But Garland is convinced that distant and urban Las Vegas threatens the springs and wells that make ranching possible in Callao, and in thousands of square miles of high desert valleys between Callao and Las Vegas.

Water officials in the Las Vegas Valley have launched major conservation efforts and they're seeking water elsewhere, but they've lusted after groundwater beneath rural valleys to the north for more than 15 years. It may be the easiest to access, given significant political and technological problems with other plans. So, they've applied for water rights in seven sparsely populated valleys, a region bigger than Connecticut, including the Snake Valley, which stretches into Utah and to Callao.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority and its water "czar," Patricia Mulroy, hope to eventually tap 65 billion gallons of rural water a year with a 300-mile-long pipeline expected to cost more than $2 billion. That's enough water for 50,000 families a year.

"There isn't enough water to go around," Mulroy told NPR in a 1991 story about the early stages of the project. "And we're the most arid spot in the United States."

Back in 1991, the Las Vegas Valley was the fastest-growing region in the country. People were moving in at the rate of 5,000 a month then, overwhelming schools, roads and other infrastructure, including the water system. As Mulroy noted, the valley gets little rain. Leave a bucket outside all year long in an average year and it'll collect just four inches of water.

Las Vegas taps groundwater from the valley beneath it and surface water from the Colorado River nearby. But neither is enough for the region's phenomenal growth. The valley has nearly doubled in population since 1991, to 1.5 million. Las Vegas gambling resorts now attract close to 40 million visitors a year.

So, for close to two decades, Mulroy has been working persistently to acquire "rights" to water in rural counties north of the Las Vegas Valley. She noted back in 1991 that there is an economic imperative to taking water from rural counties largely dependent on ranching, and bringing it to the big city.

"Ninety percent of Nevada's water goes to agriculture and generates 6,000 jobs, which is less than the Mirage Hotel generates," Mulroy said at the time. "The West was settled by the federal government as an agrarian economy (but) it isn't that anymore …The West is becoming an urban area."

Rancher Cecil Garland is not convinced.

"What Las Vegas has got to learn is that there are limits to its growth," Garland says. He also applies his own value judgment to the competing uses for water.

"Gluttony, glitter, girls and gambling are what [Las Vegas] is all about," the 81-year-old rancher asserts. "What it's all about here [in Callao] is children, cattle, country and church." Then Garland raises a fundamental question. "Would it be crops or craps that we use our water for?"

Casino mogul Steve Wynn told NPR in 1991 that it is shortsighted to dismiss Las Vegas as an expendable place.

"This isn't like a farmer who grows wheat. That's necessary," Wynn began. "Going on vacation is not necessary. But to the people who live [here] and who have families and children [here], and to this state, this is necessary, because otherwise we all have to go someplace else."

Water czar Patricia Mulroy has always insisted that it's possible to use rural water for both rural and urban needs. Her Southern Nevada Water Authority is not seeking access to water that is already used by ranchers and farmers, except in the case of five ranches it has purchased outright for their water rights. But there's deep concern in the rural valleys that any drilling and pumping of water for Las Vegas will stem or stop the flow to existing wells and springs used by wildlife, livestock and crops.

"It'll become a dry desert valley," says Dean Baker, a rancher at the southern end of Snake Valley, 70 miles south of Callao and about 200 miles north of Las Vegas. "The reason there's ranching in this valley is because there's water from these springs."

Baker takes visitors to a spring-fed pond and watering trough to illustrate his fear. Wild horses, geese, ducks and sheep found water there until a rancher expanded his operation and dug a new well. The pond is now bone dry and lined with crispy and skeletal cat-tails and rushes. The trough is empty.

"It's happened around everyplace we're pumping," Baker confesses. "Probably if southern Nevada hadn't come along with this huge plan to do many times as much [drilling and pumping] we'd have tried never to let anybody know what we'd done. But it's the best example of why we know [the Las Vegas plan] won't work."

Baker and others say they believe that the aquifers beneath the northern valleys are connected and that drilling and pumping in one place would diminish the flow of water elsewhere. Indeed, a newly released draft report from the U.S. Geological Survey concludes that the underground water system is interconnected. The report also indicates there's plenty of water for Las Vegas and the rural valleys.

The Nevada State Engineer is responsible for determining whether the Las Vegas valley will get the water it seeks beneath Nevada valleys. Utah water officials must also approve any plan that could affect water beneath Snake Valley, since it lies in both states.

So far, Nevada State Engineer Tracy Taylor has ruled on the southern Nevada water applications for just one of the rural regions, Spring Valley, which is adjacent to Snake Valley. Taylor's legally complex, 56-page ruling is summarized this way by his boss, Allen Biaggi, director of Nevada's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources:

"This [water] is all underground. It's unseen. [So] there's a lot of uncertainty," Biaggi explains. "We really don't know what's going to happen here until we do some pumping and see how this natural system reacts to that pumping."

Nevada State Engineer Taylor has awarded southern Nevada about one-fifth of the water it sought, but only conditionally. The underground water system must be studied first, and then pumped and monitored closely for 10 years. If other wells and springs begin to lose water, pumping for Las Vegas could be curtailed.

But ranchers in the northern valleys worry that there's no stopping the flow of water south once a multibillion-dollar pipeline is built and filled.

Some in the region say their future and their children's future are at stake.

"It's very simple," says Denys Koyle, owner of the Border Inn, a gas station/casino/restaurant/motel right on the Utah-Nevada border in Snake Valley. "Without water, even [with] decreased water, the future's going to go away."

Mulroy of the Southern Nevada Water Authority insists that there's more to this water fight than water.

"There is that north-south acrimony in Nevada," she said recently. "There's a cultural gap. There's a rural-urban gap. And overcoming those is probably the most daunting part of this job."

On Wednesday, in Part 2 of Morning Edition's water series, Ted Robbins provides the view from Las Vegas, and a profile of Mulroy, as she desperately seeks water for one of the driest and fastest-growing regions of the country.

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500,000 flee raging California wildfires  
By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press
Last updated: 6:23 a.m., Wednesday, October 24, 2007

SAN DIEGO -- Faced with unrelenting winds whipping wildfires into a frenzy across Southern California, firefighters conceded defeat on many fronts Tuesday to an unstoppable force that has chased more than 500,000 people away.
  
Unless the shrieking Santa Ana winds subside, and that's not expected for at least another day, fire crews say they can do little more than try to wait it out and react -- tamping out spot fires and chasing ribbons of airborne embers to keep new fires from flaring.

"If it's this big and blowing with as much wind as it's got, it'll go all the way to the ocean before it stops," said San Diego Fire Capt. Kirk Humphries. "We can save some stuff but we can't stop it."

Tentacles of unpredictable, shifting flame have burned across nearly 640 square miles, killing one person, destroying more than 1,300 homes and prompting the biggest evacuation in California history, from north of Los Angeles, through San Diego to the Mexican border.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the flames were threatening 68,000 more homes.

"We have had an unfortunate situation that we've had three things come together: very dry areas, very hot weather and then a lot of wind," Schwarzenegger said. "And so this makes the perfect storm for a fire."

In Rancho Santa Fe, a suburb north of San Diego, houses burned just yards from where fire crews fought to contain flames engulfing other properties. In the mountain community of Lake Arrowhead, cabins and vacation homes went up in flames with no fire crews in sight.

"These winds are so strong, we're not trying to fight this fire," said firefighter Jim Gelrud, an engineer from Vista, Calif. "We're just trying to save the buildings."

More than a dozen wildfires blowing across Southern California since Sunday have also injured more than 45 people, including 21 firefighters. The U.S. Forest Service earlier reported a fire death in Los Angeles County's Santa Clarita area, but officials said Tuesday that information was erroneous.

In San Diego County, authorities placed evacuation calls to more than 346,000 homes, said Luis Monteagudo, a spokesman for the county's emergency effort. Based on census and other county data, 560,000 people were ordered to leave, said Ron Roberts, chairman of the San Diego Board of Supervisors.

"It's basically a mass migration here in San Diego County. The numbers we're seeing are staggering," said Luis Monteagudo, a spokesman for the county's emergency effort.

By Tuesday evening, some 50,000 people in San Diego were being allowed to return homes near the ocean as well as portions of the city of Poway, Roberts said. No homes were lost in these neighborhoods.

President Bush, who planned to visit the region Thursday, declared a federal emergency for seven counties, a move that will speed disaster-relief efforts.

The sweeping devastation was reminiscent of blazes that tore through Southern California four years ago, killing 22 and destroying 3,640 homes.

The ferocity of the Santa Ana winds in 2003 forced crews to discard their traditional strategy and focus on keeping up with the fire and putting out spot blazes that threatened homes.

Fire crews were especially concerned about dense eucalyptus groves in Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe, fearing the highly flammable trees could turn neighborhoods prized for their secluded serenity into potential tinderboxes.
The usual tactic is to surround a fire on two sides and try to choke it off. But with fires whipped by gusts that have surpassed 100 mph, that strategy doesn't work because embers can be swept miles ahead of the fire's front line. In those cases, crews must keep 10 to 30 feet back from the flames or risk their own lives, Los Angeles County firefighter Daryl Parish said.

Added Rocklin Fire Department Capt. Martin Holm: "We do what we can. A life's a lot more important than a house."

Any flame longer than 8 feet is considered unstoppable, and even water and fire retardant will evaporate before they reach the ground, said Gordon Schmidt, a retired U.S. Forest Service deputy director of fire management.

"In these situations, the strategy generally is to fall back," he said. "You pick and choose your priorities in terms of what you can protect. Instead of trying to stop the fire, you try to prevent it from burning resources."

In the suburbs north of San Diego, firefighters did just that as fingers of flame pulsed across a 10-lane freeway and raced up a hill on the opposite side in just seconds. The fire engulfed white-washed homes at the top of the ridge.

Groves of eucalyptus trees exploded in the heat in one ritzy cul-de-sac in Rancho Santa Fe, sending off a scattered popping that sounded like machine gun fire.

Firefighters parked their rigs in the driveways of the most threatened homes and hosed down fences and open space around homes as a blood-red sun set over a sky choked with smoke and falling ash.

Firefighters battling two fast-moving blazes in Lake Arrowhead, in the San Bernardino Mountains about 130 miles east of Los Angeles, were also taxed by steep terrain, winding roads and a forest packed with dead or dying trees. More than 300 homes burned, fire officials said.

At least three times in the past two days, fire crews have been forced to "pull off, and wait for things to calm down" because of danger, said San Bernardino National Forest Ranger Kurt Winchester.

"In a lot of places, you just have to back off and let the fire go," he said. "There's nothing we can do."

The one person confirmed dead was identified as Thomas Varshock of Tecate, a town on the U.S. side of the border southeast of San Diego. He died over the weekend after he ignored warnings to evacuate and authorities left to take care of other evacuations, the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office said.

The medical examiner's office also listed four other deaths as connected to the wildfires because they occurred during or after evacuations. Three people were in their 90s and died from natural causes; the fourth was a woman who died after falling at a restaurant.

In Rancho Santa Fe, neighbors tried to protect a friend's home with a garden hose Monday night as flames raced up a ridge directly behind the house. Yards away, an engine crew kept watch as another home, already fully engulfed, burned to the ground.
"We told the firemen about (this house) and we put out a few hot spots," said friend Gary Rich. "They told us once they put out that house, they'd come over here."

But, Rich said, encroaching flames were making him nervous and he might leave before then.

Fighting a gusty blaze also puts the firefighters in harm's way. At least twice in the last two days, firefighters have had to unfurl their emergency fire shelters -- small fire-resistant tents to shield them when they can't escape a fire.

Weather conditions only grew worse, with temperatures across Southern California about 10 degrees above average. Temperatures were in the 90s by mid-afternoon and wind gusts up to 60 mph were expected in mountains and canyons.

In the San Diego suburb of Del Dios, fire completely destroyed one home but seemed to touch other items at random. Two lawn chairs and an umbrella were left in a burnt, melted heap on the patio. But behind the house, near a murky brown swimming pool, two chaise lounges and a four-foot-tall decorative fountain survived unscathed.

J.C. Playford, an evacuee from the nearby community of Ramona, surveyed the damage and wondered whether his own home was still standing.

"I've got two reports, one person told me it's gone, and one person said it's still there," he said, "So I have no idea."