OT: Re: [ale] Water levels

[James P. Kinney III]

On Mon, 2007-12-31 at 15:03 -0500, Greg Freemyer wrote:

> Everyone wants to blame Atlanta, when in reality Atlanta is not the
> issue.  It is the overwhelmingly huge amount of water required to be
> sent to the Apalachicola Bay.  As the governor said: "this is not a
> consumption based shortage".  And for once a politician seems to be
> telling the truth.
> 
> Or maybe Southern Company is using huge amounts of water.   The daily
> withdrawals made by their power plants are astounding, but I assume
> they mostly just use the water to cool their systems, then return it
> back to the river.  Effectively not consuming much water at all.

It's really a combination of all the demands on the system. Atlanta
consumes a vast amount of water and so does everything downstream. Water
removed from the river is not all returned by the sewer system and
runoff process. Much is percolated down into the aquifer that is not a
supplier of the river system. The salt balance in bay systems is very
complex. We really don't have a solid understanding yet of the
interconnectedness of life processes in aquatic medium to make a life or
death judgment call on what species can die out so we can drink Coke and
Budweiser and have shiny clean cars. Sadly for human use, the biological
needs of the Apalachicola Bay are not truly set by human law but by
evolutionary process. 

Maybe another "prayer session" by our politicians can change that. :)

-- 
James P. Kinney III          
CEO & Director of Engineering 
Local Net Solutions,LLC        
770-493-8244                    
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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