Georgia’s extended drought is effectively over, but water restrictions remain for much of the Atlanta area. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, the state was 98.97 percent drought-free this week, with only a tiny area south of Augusta listed as abnormally dry. None of the state is in official drought conditions.
Still, a large portion of metro Atlanta remains under Level 2 water restrictions, and most of North Georgia is under Level 1 restrictions. Generally, counties along the Chattahoochee River have the Level 2 restrictions, which limit most outdoor water use.
Keven Chambers, a spokesman for the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, said low levels at Lake Lanier are keeping those limits in place. Lanier, a source of drinking water for much of the area and a reservoir for all communities on the Chattahoochee downstream of Buford Dam, was 1,065.31 feet on Friday morning. That is about 5.7 feet below full pool.
“It is because of Lanier being so low,” Chambers said when asked about continuing restrictions. There is no certain level the lake must reach before restrictions will be lifted. “The lake fills very slowly, and Lanier usually falls in the summer. We are having real concerns about it.”
Lanier saw a sharp fall in 2016 during the worst of the drought, when it lost 16 feet of water. It has regained about a third of that this year.
The lake has been slow to refill, in part, because the area around Helen, near the headwaters for the Chattahoochee, was among the last areas in the state still in official drought. That reduced how much water flowed into the lake. “We are still looking for ways to conserve water,” Chambers said.
The last time Georgia had no areas of abnormally dry or drought conditions was April 15, 2014. Since then, the U.S. Drought Monitor has reported at least part of the state as needing rain each week. The drought peaked around Thanksgiving when 100 percent of the state was in drought, with a third of it experiencing exceptional drought, the driest on the scale.
Atlanta received more rainfall than normal in four of the first six months this year, according to the National Weather Service. The NWS online records go back to 1996, and last month was the wettest June during that period with 7.71 inches of rain.
That month, more than anything, helped erase most of the remaining drought. At the end of May, more than half the state was dry or in drought.
