With Georgia still suffering from a serious drought that is threatening the water supply for the state’s largest city, Atlanta, local and state government officials, along with private business representatives, gathered Monday at the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce for the Georgia Water Solutions Forum. The forum included a panel discussion of representatives from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the Georgia Association of Water Professionals, the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co. and Trevose, Pa.-based GE Water & Process Technologies.

James Palmer, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region IV administrator, began the panel discussion with a national and regional overview of the EPA’s perspective on the water crisis in the southeast.
“The number one environmental issue always has been, still is and will be water,” he said. “That’s not just water to accommodate the tremendous growth that we’re seeing … it is [the need], people, to maintain what we’ve got.”

The panel discussed new technologies for conserving water, as well as the use of reused “gray” water for irrigation purposes, and the need for a united, regional approach to water use. In Georgia’s case, state officials want the U.S. Corps of Engineers to slow the release of water from the Chattahoochee River to fill Atlanta’s reservoirs, a plan that conflicts with environmental requirements downstream in Alabama and Florida.

Forum moderator Wayne Clough, president of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said the topic of water conservation should concern the entire nation. “Here in the United States over the last [several] years our population grew by a little over 50 percent, but water use tripled,” Clough said. “We aren’t conserving very well.”