Consulting-Specifying Engineer - October 2008 - (Page 50)

Engineers fight water scarcity with water efficiency. BY PATRICK LYNCH, Contributing editor Down the drain 50 M any cities in America are waking up to the fact that water supply for buildings is fast becoming an urgent issue. With rainfalls decreasing and droughts increasing, water conservation techniques need to become a vital part of the discussion of the planning and development of future projects. Cities such as Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Los Angeles have been the poster children of urban water shortages. Ultimately, urban water shortages have multiple impacts on MEP engineers, municipal planners, and building owners, including costs for hooking up new buildings to water utilities, HVAC and plumbing systems designs, and water metering and control. Regional issues In the Mountain and Pacific regions, the dominant water resources are Lakes Mead and Powel. These vast reservoirs, fed by the Colorado River, provide water to major urban areas such as Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography conducted a water budget analysis, which showed that under current conditions, there is a 10% chance that live storage of freshwater in Lake Mead and Lake Powell will disappear by 2013, and a 50% chance that it will be gone by 2021. If there are no changes in the water use and water allocation, the decrease in runoff from the Colorado River will drastically affect the major urban communities of the southwestern United States. The southwestern United States, with its arid climate and scare water supplies, is not the only region of the country whose water shortage continues to be a growing problem. Several states in the East South Central and South Atlantic states continue to engage in Supreme Court legal battles to determine the use of water within their state. A two-decade-long, tri-state battle between Georgia, Florida, and Alabama involves the appropriation of water from the Lake Lanier reservoir. The reservoir, which is located just north of Atlanta, provides drinking water for more than 3 million people. Due to the statewide drought in Georgia, especially in Atlanta, the 38,000-acre Lake Lanier reservoir is down more than 15 ft from normal levels. At the lake’s southern tip, it feeds into the Chattahoochee River, which runs along the border of Alabama. Eventually, the river flows south into Florida’s Apalachicola River and into the Gulf of Mexico. Georgia filed a legal motion demanding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) limit the amount of water it releases from the reservoir. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue publicly pleaded with President Bush to exempt Georgia from the Endangered Species Act out of fear of not being able to provide ample drinking water for its citizens. President Bush dispatched Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to broker negotiations between the three states near the end of 2007. Negotiations failed, and Kempthorne, the USACE, and other federal agencies implemented a water-sharing plan that limited the amount of water that could be siphoned from Lake Lanier. In June 2008, the Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection (FDEP) sued USACE for violation of the Consulting-Specifying Engineer • OCTOBER 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Consulting-Specifying Engineer - October 2008

Consulting-Specifying Engineer - October 2008 Contents Viewpoint Letters News M/E Roundtable Cities Under One Roof Eight Design Tips for Integration Is 'Green' Really New? Down the Drain Product of the Year Awards Codes & Standards Case Study New Products Equipment Lifecycles Advertiser Index Green Space

Consulting-Specifying Engineer - October 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.