Meet Water Needs With Efficiency and Conservation First

Clean water is our birthright, the lifeblood for a way of life enjoyed by many. However, Georgia faces unprecedented challenges to its clean water supply. More frequent and intense droughts and the recent ruling by a federal judge regarding Lake Lanier continues to strain our communities and our limited water resources. We must act now to ensure enough clean, safe, reliable water for current and future generations.

Instead of wasting time and money on litigation and massive storage proposals, we must implement the fastest, least expensive measures to meet our water needs.  By aggressively managing demand for water before increasing water supplies, we can reduce the burden on taxpayers, avoid unnecessary capital costs and conserve water resources.

We urge the General Assembly to implement cost-effective solutions to secure our water supply, such as (1) requiring new multi-family residential buildings to install meters on each unit to more accurately measure and charge for water consumption, known as submetering; (2) reducing leaks in pipes that carry water to our communities; (3) restricting daytime outdoor watering and (4) requiring new development to meet higher water efficiency standards.

Secure Stable Funding for Transit

We urge the General Assembly to remove limitations on how and where transportation funds can be spent to ensure that existing transportation dollars are used most effectively.  Specifically, we urge lifting the 50/50 restrictions on operations and maintenance that is the ability of the Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) to provide quality service and care for infrastructure.  We also urge lifting restrictions on the General Sales Tax on Motor Fuel so it may be used for all transportation purposes, not just roads and bridges.  And we support the creation of a new locally levied Transportation Special Purpose Option Sales Tax (TSPLOST) to allow local governments to work together to fund joint transportation projects, including their operating costs.

Manage Water to Ensure Economic Prosperity for All

Interbasin transfers (IBTs) are the withdrawal or diversion of water from one river basin for use in another river basin.  There is currently no legal requirement to ever return the water.  IBTs irreversibly alter natural water flows in our rivers and streams and can harm downstream communities that depend on certain flows for drinking water, industry and recreation.  These water transfers also affect a stream’s ability to absorb pollution by lowering the flow in the basin of origin.

We believe that new or expanded IBTs should be prohibited until the Environmental Protection Division (EPD) has rigorously analyzed less costly water supply alternatives, including aggressive implementation of conservation; evaluated impacts to both the donor and receiving river basins; determined that the benefits of the transfer outweigh the negative impacts; and provided opportunity for public involvement for the citizens and stakeholders of both basins.

We urge the General Assembly to put in statute criteria laid out in the Statewide Water Management Plan that the Environmental Protection Division (EPD) must use in evaluating a proposal for a new or expanded transfer.  We urge allowing existing water transfers to continue only if the user is in full compliance with all applicable water conservation and management plans.  All applications for transfers, whether new or existing, should include environmental protections for the basins of origin and receipt.  Finally, we urge requiring EPD to incorporate information about existing interbasin transfers into water withdrawal permits, including information about the end uses of such transfers and their cumulative impacts.

Accept No Rollbacks

We believe that state agencies should continue to pay stormwater fees for the pollution caused by their buildings and parking lots rather than exempting themselves and increasing the tax burden on other property owners as HB 316 proposes. 

We believe local water utilities should have their ability restored to set outdoor watering restrictions that make the most sense for their region even if they differ from the state by allowing the sunset of HB 1281.

We believe we should keep our highways safe and scenic by maintaining existing compromise language and not expanding billboard companies’ ability to cut trees on our public right of way to maximize billboard visibility as SB 164 would do.