Lake Lanier advocates have long pushed for an increase in the lake’s full pool to 1,073 feet above sea level.
Now that it has lingered there for some time, thanks largely to steady rainfalls, are they backing off that push?
Joanna Cloud, for one, stands firm on the issue.
“We’ve got to get additional capacity,” said the executive director of the Gainesville-based Lake Lanier Association. “No matter how you want to accomplish that task … there is a demand for additional fresh water.”
Cloud said she believes the demands for water out of Lanier aren’t going to drop and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service isn’t going to ease off its concerns about meeting water demands for endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico.
But the issue “isn’t just a Florida-Alabama thing — it’s within our state,” she said.
Cloud was referring to the longstanding legal wrangling between Georgia, Florida and Alabama over water sharing in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River basin, which includes Lake Lanier at the northernmost end.
“Any time we get into a dry weather situation in the south part of our state, the Chattahoochee is going to have to step up and augment some of those flows,” Cloud said.
via Higher levels revive Lanier full-pool debate | GainesvilleTimes.com.
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