Incorporated VS Un-Incorporated

[cwkimbro]

Originally Posted by bu2

Gwinnett is the county that would die of thirst if Georgia lost the water wars over Lanier. Fulton and DeKalb wouldn't be so severely impacted.

This isn't quite true. The state would have limited withdrawal levels, but their ability to divvy them up within the state doesn't go away.

This is one fight we truly stand together on. However, that particular judgement that would limit withdrawal rates (to the state).

And that was with the old litigation now ruled in our favor.

The new litigation taken to the Supreme Court is directly an equitable apportionment fight for state level water use.

This will get trickier.... there are two pre-existing problems that are far worse in Atlanta (not all parts of Fulton) and Dekalb.

Dekalb hasn't rebuilt their water treatment strategy in a big way yet. They are the cause of the largest inter-basin water transfer in our region. The issue is it takes the water directly out the ACT basin and treats almost all wastewater it into an entirely different basin to the southeast, the Ocmulgee Basin.

Gwinnett does the same thing to a much smaller degree and they have worked hard to embrace infrastructure and zoning that keeps more water flowing back towards Lanier and the Chattahoochee. That lowers our overall use from the ACT basin. Ironically given the topic, this would be harder to happen in Gwinnett if there were 4 or 5 smaller water and sewage systems. A large part of Gwinnett County is in the Ocmulgee basin too, but we get more of our waster water to travel the distance back into the ACT.

So if we ever have to limit how much we pull from the ACT, one of our ways forward it stop the inter-basin transfers away from the ACT. That will severely impact Dekalb the most, because it will have to rebuild a large portion its treatment infrastructure. I'm sure we will be able to find a way to engineer the best way to pump sewage or treated water around, but that will hit Dekalb strongly if Georgia needs to eliminate the interbasin transfers to help meet a mandated apportionment.

Atlanta is by the largest water consumer per capita in the region by a wide margin. Much of this is simply from having an old infrastructure. The ongoing changes mandated by the EPA going on will fix a good bit of it, but not all of it. Luckily, this is something set in motion for the long-haul.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by cwkimbro

That is much more minor than you make it sound.

There was a disagreement over the cost of services offered and a lawsuit is a proper venue when you can't come to an agreement. Those kinds of things happen in many places. By and large there is not any large-scale friction with the public between city and county.

Peacthree Corners was very interesting. It is worth noting, though, it didn't form because they felt like the county wasn't providing for them. They actually tried to create a city-lite and purposely offer as few services as possible, which goes against the idea of friction with the county. The same thing was pitched in Forsyth Co., yet they don't seem to have too many gripes with more services from the county. They seemed more interested in anti-growth zoning Nimby-ism.

It really stemmed from fear Nocross would access valuable commercial real estate if they did want to form into a city in the future, which interesting and worrisome in different ways. It still draws different conclusions.

Tucker is trying to do the same thing in DeKalb. They are offering minimal services, primarily zoning and code enforcement.