Metro District

The following proposed amendment and supporting rationale for Senate Bill 130 were given, along with an oral presentation, to the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on March 6, 2001.

IMPROVEMENTS TO SB 130 TO HELP ENSURE EFFECTIVENESS AND DEPENDENCE ON A LAKE LANIER BASIN ADVISORY COUNCIL
(Ron Seder 3/5/01)

SB 130 creates a Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District to “establish policy, create plans, and promote intergovernmental coordination for all water issues in the district; to facilitate multijurisdictional water related projects; and to enhance access to funding for water related projects among local governments in the district.” And, “It is the primary purpose of the district to develop regional and watershed-specific plans for stormwater management, waste-water treatment, water supply, water conservation and the general protection of water quality.”

Lake Lanier is the drinking water reservoir for most of Atlanta, and recreation associated with the lake produces a $2+ billion economic benefit. Excellent Lake Lanier water quality is important for both drinking water and recreation.

The quality of the water in Lake Lanier depends on the quality of the water coming to it from its entire watershed. However, only three of the seven Lake Lanier watershed counties are included in the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District. There must be more emphasis on the entire Lake Lanier watershed water quality, and all watershed counties should be represented in the determination of what is to be done in protecting Lake Lanier’s water quality.

It has been apparent for some years that Lake Lanier water quality is at risk. Continuing development on the watershed and increasing wastewater discharges from on and off the watershed will continue to degrade the quality of Lake Lanier water unless actions are initiated to prevent the degradation.

In 1999 HR 373 created a House Lake Lanier Water Quality Study Committee to “undertake a study of the conditions, needs, issues, and problems”…………….”and recommend any actions or legislation which the committee deems necessary or appropriate.”

Two recommendations came from members of the Lanier Water Quality Study Committee. One recommendation, which was not implemented, was to create a ”Lake Lanier Preservation Authority” to “facilitate regional water quality planning, coordination cooperation, and education and implement related policies in the Lake Sidney Lanier watershed among local governments and their respective regulatory bodies and between levels of government in those portions of Dawson, Forsyth, Gwinnett, Habersham, Hall, Lumpkin, and White counties that lie within the drainage area or watershed of Lake Sidney Lanier.”

The other recommendation, which was spelled out in HB 1562 and passed by the last (2000) Legislature, was to create a Lake “Sidney Lanier Watershed Governance Council” to promote regional water quality planning, cooperation, and coordination in the Lake Sidney Lanier Watershed among local governments and their respective regulatory bodies and between levels of government in those portions of Dawson, Forsyth, Gwinnett, Habersham, Hall, Lumpkin, and White counties which lie within the drainage area or watershed of Lake Sidney Lanier. The bill says, “The council shall meet at least six times per year.

Members were not appointed to the “Sidney Lanier Watershed Governance Council” and there were no meetings of the council. Even if the council had been created it had no real authority to make things happen and there were no state or local actions depending on the council’s output. Therefore, the legislation creating the council could be, and was, ignored.

Historically there have been two other organizations created to tackle the challenges facing Lake Lanier. Both organizations had memberships of watershed governments and other stakeholders. One organization was the Lanier Watershed Regional Council (LWRC). The other organization was the Lake Lanier Advisory Council (LLAC). Both were in existence for several years, but neither produced anything significant to protect the quality of the water in Lake Lanier. The LWRC did contract with Dr. Mac Callaham of North Georgia College to do periodic water analysis of water from several points on the lake.

The opinion of many was that the LWRC and the LLAC were ineffective in protecting Lake Lanier because there was not an internal resolve to make Lake Lanier protection a high priority action because of conflicting priorities of the members, and because there was no one depending on a work product from the organizations.

So, we have had three organizations created to protect Lake Lanier, which have resulted in nothing significant to protect the lake. They were ineffective and ignored because they could be.

SB 130 creates a the Lake Lanier Basin Advisory Council to “advise the district in the development and implementation of policy, provide input to the director concerning the development of minimum elements and standards for plans provided for under this article, and provide input on the content of plans provided for under this article as such plans are developed.”

Certainly a Lake Lanier Basin Advisory Council that has membership of all Lake Lanier Watershed Counties is an essential part of SB 130. But, the council only gives advice and provides input. There is nothing in the bill that causes reliance on output of the council. Therefore this council can also be allowed to be ineffective and ignored.

At a minimum the Lake Lanier Basin Advisory Council should have a mission of preserving Lake Lanier water quality. The Council should be required to produce Lake Lanier watershed-specific management plan to be approved and accepted, disapproved and/altered by the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District. The plan should be completed and presented to the Water Planning District in 18 months to allow the District to meet its two-year requirement for a district-wide watershed management plan.

Causing the Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District to rely on the Lake Lanier Basin Advisory Council watershed-specific management plan makes the council responsible for a work product and makes the Water Planning District dependant on the council’s work product.

These suggested Lake Lanier Basin Advisory Council changes to SB 130 would produce much needed better future Lake Lanier water quality.

PROPOSED LANGUAGE CHANGES TO SB 130
(SB 130 retrieved from the web 3/3/01 morning)
(Ron Seder 3/5/01)

12-5-581
(b)(1) In addition, the Lake Lanier Advisory Council membership shall include the County Commission Chairmen from Forsyth, Gwinnett, Hall, Habersham, White, Lumpkin and Dawson Counties. Within 18 months after the effective date of this article, because Lake Lanier is the main Atlanta area drinking water reservoir, and is heavily used for recreation that contributes a huge economic benefit to the area, the Lake Lanier Basin Advisory Council shall be responsible to produce a watershed-specific management plan. The Lake Lanier Basin Advisory Council’s watershed-specific plan shall be approved, disapproved and/or altered by the District and incorporated into the district-wide watershed management plan required in 12-5-582 (b). The Lake Lanier Basin watershed-specific plan should include the components for the Lake Lanier Basin that are designated for the district-wide watershed management plan in 12-5-582 (b).

(b)(2) The Lake Lanier Basin Advisory Council shall review the Lake Lanier watershed-specific plan annually to determine whether there is a need to update such plan, and in any case the council shall prepare an updated watershed management plan every five years in concert with and incorporated into the plan update required of the District, or sooner if the district decides to update the district watershed management plan sooner.

(b)(3) The Lake Lanier Basin Advisory Council shall meet at least six times per year at a time and place set forth in the minutes of the district and at such other times as the chairperson may direct. All such meetings shall be open to the public.

(b)(4) A majority of the members to which the council board is entitled shall constitute a quorum.

(b)(5) Once a quorum has been established, a majority of those present and voting shall be required to adopt any matter before the district.

(b)(6) Prior to July 1 each year, the officers of the Council shall submit to the district for adoption a preliminary budget required for the operation of the district during the ensuing calendar year, which shall also be the fiscal year.

(b)(7) Funding for the Council operations shall be derived from the following sources:
(1) Dues paid by cities and counties within the Council such that the aggregate total of all such dues from all such cities and counties shall be no less than $200,000 annually. Such fees shall be raised on a per capita assessment or water-usage fee basis or based on a formula adopted and approved by the local government members of the district;
(2) Appropriated or contracted state funds.
(c) The Council is specifically empowered to contract or otherwise participate in and to accept grants, funds, gifts, or services from any federal, state, or local government or its agencies or instrumentalities and from private and civic sources and to expend funds received therefrom under provisions as may be required and agreed upon by the district in connection with any program or purpose for which the district exists.
(d) All funds of the district not otherwise employed shall be deposited from time to time to the credit of the district in such banks, trust companies, or other depositories as the district may select.

There is a letter " Coordinate water planning" in the reader responses section of the Atlanta Constitution today (2/27/01). The letter is written by the co-chairmen of the Clean Water Initiative Task Force, and refutes yesterday's Constitution excellent editorial, "Using failed ARC model will drown water policies".

"First, your editorial states that the local elected official members of the district board will be "appointed by the ARC." This is not accurate.

The Atlanta Regional Commission has no appointments to the board of the planning district. Counties and cities within the planning district appoint their own representatives to the district board."

" The board shall consist of ten county commission chairpersons or chief executive officers of county members of the district and five mayors of municipalities within the district, appointed by majority vote of the board of the Atlanta Regional Commission; provided, however, that five of such appointments shall represent counties within the district area having a population of 200,000 or more according to the 2000 United States decennial census or any future such census, and one of such appointments shall represent a city within the district area having a population of 200,000 or more according to the 200 United States decennial census or any future such census".

Five counties have permanent membership because of their size. That leaves the ARC to appoint five other county commission chairpersons or executive officers from the remaining 13 Water District counties to the Water District Board. It also allows the ARC to select four city mayors from many Water District cities. The authors of the letters can haggle over whether or not these are appointments of members to the board, but it does give the ARC and Wayne Hill considerable latitude in selecting county chairman and city mayors supporting their desires, and omitting others.

There is also considerable discussion in the letter of water basin vs. political districts, which can be confusing and misleading to the average reader. However, I see nothing in the letter that does anything to include all Lake Lanier watershed counties, and assigning in-line responsibilities, to do the proper job of protecting Lake Lanier.

Senate Bill 130 proposes to create an 18 County Metropolitan North Georgia (Atlanta) Water District to control and allocate the water resources (sewer discharges and water supply intakes) throughout Metropolitan Atlanta, including Hall and Forsyth Counties.

Now that SB 130 has been introduced in the Legislature, with a high probably of passing in some form, the question to be addressed is how can it be amended to more adequately protect Lake Lanier.

An amendment to SB 130 was added to the Bill by Senator Casey Cagle (Hall/Forsyth Counties), while the bill was in the Senate Natural Resources Committee, to create a 20 member Lake Lanier Council. I think that is a good first step, but I believe the Lake Lanier Council must now be given some teeth for it to be more likely able to protect Lake Lanier.

I urge that the Lake Lanier Council be made an integral part of the Water District and be given in-line responsibilities rather than being just advisory.

The Georgia Legislature created a Lake Lanier advisory council last year, but it never got off the ground. I believe the advisory council legislation was created, and then ignored, last year in order to of defeat the creation of a much more meaningful Lake Lanier Authority proposed by Representative Clint Smith (Dawson/Hall Counties). I am convinced that there are some well-connected people who are not in favor of elevating the priority of Lake Lanier protection.

I believe SB 130 should be changed to include a Lake Lanier Council that has the mission to protect Lake Lanier, the responsibility to create a plan to protect the lake, the authority to get the plan implemented and is adequately funded to accomplish its mission. The Lake Lanier Council should include membership from across the entire watershed because the quality of the water in Lake Lanier depends on the quality of the water coming to it from the entire watershed.

One way to implement this concept in SB 130 is to have the Lake Lanier Council produce a Lake Lanier watershed plan to be approved, disapproved and/or adjusted by the Metropolitan North Georgia Water District Board. That would give the Lake Lanier Council in-line responsibilities, requiring the Water District Board to rely on the Council for a work product, making it much more difficult for the Lake Lanier Council to be ignored by the decision makers.

I hope citizens will contact their elected officials and ask them to include this change in SB 130.

I am not in favor of this bill because I believe it does not adequately provide for the preservation of Lake Lanier. I think the bill will produce incentives for more treated sewage to be discharged into Lake Lanier.

This bill grew out of the so-called Clean Water Initiative last year led by the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

Although clean water sounds like the noble goal, I do not think this latest effort was motivated by a desire for clean water for the sake of having clean water. The immediate real purpose of this effort is to provide for more treated sewage discharge.

As clean air was not very important to the development and business community until federal road funds were blocked, clean water was not all that important until additional sewer discharges into our waterways were threatened.

I believe the outcome of passing this bill would be to direct more, and more solidly justify already established, sewer discharges into Lake Lanier.

EPD has already issued a permit to Gwinnett County allowing them discharge 40 mgd of treated sewage into Lake Lanier, which threatens the quality and health of the lake. The Gwinnett treated sewage discharge was permitted into Lake Lanier because Lake Lanier currently has better water quality than does the Chattahoochee River. The Gwinnett County treated sewage was determined by EPD to be not clean enough to be discharged into the Chattahoochee River; therefore EPD encouraged Gwinnett County to discharge it into Lake Lanier.

The Lake Lanier water quality standards that were established last year allow considerably more pollution of Lake Lanier without violating the standards.

If Lake Lanier water quality was one of the prime purposes for the Water District, all Lake Lanier watershed counties would be included in the District, not just Hall, Forsyth and Gwinnett. The quality of the water in Lake Lanier results from the quality of the water coming to the lake from its entire watershed. Habersham, White, Lumpkin and Dawson contain more than half of the lake's watershed and they are not part of the proposed district. The quality of Lake Lanier water cannot be adequately controlled without dealing with the entire lake watershed.

Now let's look at the proposed Water District. It is an 18 county Water District including portions of several watersheds without fully containing any one watershed. I believe, and I think many experts believe, that water quality and quantity must be managed by watershed rather than political boundaries to be most effective.

A 25 person Board would run the Water District. The ARC would appoint 15 board members from 10 counties and 5 cities. Forsyth and Hall Counties are not members of the ARC, therefore, chances are that Forsyth and Hall Counties will not be adequately represented.

Wayne Hill, the pro growth Gwinnett County Commission Chairman, and staunch advocate of more treated sewage discharges into Lake Lanier, is also the Chairman of the ARC. Would he approve of any Water District member who does not support his determination to discharge huge quantities of additional treated sewage into Lake Lanier? I don’t think so.

Six board members are to be appointed by the Governor, two by the Lieutenant Governor and two by the Speaker of the House, who are all Democrats. Is it likely that a Republican Forsyth County and a mostly Republican Hall County would have a chance of having fair and appropriate appointments to the board? I don’t think so.

Preservation of Lake Lanier still requires a Lake Lanier Authority, with membership representing the lake’s entire watershed. The mission of the Authority would be to preserve Lake Lanier, with the responsibility to produce a plan to protect the lake and the authority to get the plan implemented. I think any bill that falls short of those objectives would not do the proper job for Lake Lanier.

Let me summarize. Because this bill grew out of the need for more sewer discharge I believe the bill is bad for Lake Lanier. It would encourage more polluting treated sewage to be discharged into the lake. In addition, if the bill were passed, I think a Board appointed by Georgia’s top three Democrats and the ARC, of which Forsyth and Hall are not members, would not adequately represent Forsyth and Hall Counties’ interests.

Following is my reaction to the Clean Water Initiative that I passed on to State Representative To Knox. Lake Lanier needs a State Lake Lanier Authority.

Thanks for passing Clint Smith’s letter and attachments, about the Clean Water Initiative (CWI), on to me. I have read the material you sent to me as well as the full FINAL REPORT OF THE CLEAN WATER INITIATIVE on the web at http://www.cleanwaterinitiative.com/presentations/cleanwatenew.pdf .

I believe the CWI was created to solve a potential shortage of sewer service in the Atlanta and not the stand-alone noble cause of protecting water quality for its own sake and for public health. I see this effort much the same as GRTA being created not to solve pollution problems for the sake of clean air, but rather to convince the Federal Government to again provide Metro Atlanta with money to continue its road-building program.

The CWI conclusion is that there should be a Metro Atlanta Water Planning District. That suggested District does not include most of the Lake Lanier watershed. The District excludes Dawson, Lumpkin, White and Habersham Counties, which have more of the Lake Lanier watershed than those Counties included in the District. If one is really concerned about maintaining or improving Lake Lanier water quality, the runoff and other pollution from those excluded counties is a very important part of the Lake Lanier water quality problem/solution.

I believe adequate sewer capacity and more roads to be worthy goals, but I do not like the air and water quality noble causes to mask the real intent of the effort with the public.

The problem as I understand it is that Metro Atlanta is being denied additional sewer discharges into the Chattahoochee River because the River is low in dissolved oxygen (DO) resulting in a large measure from all of the treated sewage discharges into the river.

As you know the Georgia EPD has refused Gwinnett County any additional discharges into the Chattahoochee River, which caused Gwinnett County to determine that the next most cost effective sewer solution for them was to discharge treated sewage into Lake Lanier. This month the Georgia EPD gave Gwinnett County a permit to discharge 40 million gallons per day of treated sewage into Lake Lanier. This is not being done anywhere while protecting Lake Lanier like water quality in the receiving body of water. Contrary to Gwinnett County’s claims, I believe their treated sewage discharge into the lake will be very harmful to the lake. Much of the results of our analysis are revealed in the Lake Lanier topic on my website at http://ronseder.home.mindspring.com .

Earlier this year the Georgia Board of Natural Resources, acting on EPD’s recommendation, established water quality standards on a few components. Some of these standards, particularly for phosphorus, allow lake water quality to seriously degrade and still satisfy the standard.

My view is that there are strong financial and politically influential interests pushing for the sewer discharge. The negative consequences of decisions made now will not be realized for several years, probably after the current elected and politically appointed decision makers are gone, when it will be practically impossible to reverse the decision. Toilets will still have to be flushed, so the valve cannot be shut when the problem is discovered, analyzed, potential solutions studied and a very expensive alternative determined. The future sewer situation with Lake Lanier may repeat what has happened to the Chattahoochee River, and the great and expensive difficulty of correcting those problems caused by decisions made decades ago.

In the CWI report septic systems are characterized as being bad. However, it has been my finding that there is a lack of empirical evidence to support that claim. There just is not much science authenticating the relative septic system environmental impact. But, sewer service allows much more development density (more profit), which may give some the incentive to attack the septic sewage solution.

Tom, I think regional planning of sewer and water might have some merit, but I think motives of current decision makers will cause Lake Lanier to be sacrificed for the sake of providing more sewers.

As we have discussed before, Lake Lanier needs its own state authority with a main mission of protecting Lake Lanier. I envision a state authority that would, to satisfy its mission, have the responsibility to produce a plan to protect Lake Lanier, have the authority to get the plan implemented (probably through local governments) and be sufficiently funded to satisfy its mission.

Tom, again thanks for passing along the information. The rationale for many of my conclusions can be found on my website referenced earlier in this letter.

I would like very much to have a discussion with you about this and other threats to Lake Lanier. If you agree please let me know and we can schedule a meeting.