APPARENTLY, when a big government makes grant money for anything available to smaller governments, it has become a knee-jerk reaction to try for some of it, whether it perfectly fits the intended aim or not.
How else does one explain the planned bid of Floyd County, and no doubt many in similar shape regarding water, for some of the $40 million the General Assembly set aside in “free money” to improve supplies in what amounts to a pretty weak answer to the current drought?
It’s a drought that, one notes, predictions are may get even worse this summer for the parched Atlanta metro region. And it’s a drought that, as Rome and Floyd County have hollered at their top of their lungs, barely affects this region because of its nature-provided bounty of liquid assets.
Oh sure, some of the $40 million, or even some of the $30 million in low-interest loans also promised, could even out the local flows and make the supplies more varied, but that wasn’t what this was all about, now was it? Frankly, all $70 million could go to create a second Lake Lanier and still wouldn’t be sufficient to quench the thirst where it exists.
THERE’S NOTHING wrong with Floyd County’s wish to drill more deep-water wells (the aquifers around here remain an underutilized source). Nor is there with its planned bid to make the county and Cave Spring better able to back each other up.
Indeed, the county is to be commended for having spent more than $100,000 on repairs to get its old Fulton Road Well back to nearly close enough to operate again. It’ll be able to put 350,000 gallons a day into the area’s supply. Gosh, and they did that on their own, without state money in sight.
Nor is there anything wrong with Rome’s own plan to eventually — not now — seek low-interest money for a new, bigger intake on the Etowah River.
These fall under the heading of good planning ... and projects that are likely worth doing. But, unlike Atlanta in particular, these are not crying needs without which the immediate economic fate of the community, and residents’ ability to flush toilets, depends.
THE LEGISLATURE’S paltry response to a major problem was insufficient to start with; the money sure doesn’t need to be leaked away to what amounts to a new pork-pulling contest.
No doubt the chances of Floyd County and similar getting a piece of this pie are probably pretty slim. The talk has been all about new supplemental reservoirs in places facing shortages, not about drilling new wells in places where citizens know they’ve got loads of water and have mainly been annoyed about not being allowed to wash their cars when they want.
As Dan Clarke, external-affairs manager for the Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority, told a local 10-county gathering, “It’s very competitive, but we’re accepting a wide range of projects. ... No one solution applies, although we suspect a lot (of the money) will go to communities that have already started to invest in reservoirs.” (Right, like in Paulding County, home to House Speaker Glenn Richardson.)
One can’t sympathize too much with the Atlanta metro, which for years let its business/growth pot boil without adding water and thus has scorched the recipe, but that’s the region with the problem — not the land of many rivers that doesn’t rely on a single reservoir ... nor even have one, for that matter, nor started to invest in one.
THERE’S REALLY something fundamentally wrong with everybody clamoring for a piece of every pie that’s taken out of the treasury oven ... even the chubby, overweight kids.
Even with local chances so slight, why the attitude that if there’s money there for a necessary purpose let’s try to grab some of it off whether locally needed or not? Besides, if wells and water intakes are really that essential, why not put them on a SPLOST? There’s always one coming up, after all.
Or is this something local officials are only interested in doing if somebody else pays for it?
This state reaction is a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the need to develop new, assured water supplies for high-growth areas. But at least it is something tangible, unlike the talk of suing Tennessee over possession a river not now in Georgia.
RESERVOIRS and wells — but mostly rain — where they are needed is what’s needed now and not long lines of local officials with their hands out.
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