Georgia Rainfall Noted

Our abundant Georgia April showers in 2015 reminded me that a few years ago, we had a drought.  I looked up Georgia’s average rainfall on noaa.gov.

NOAA shows the 1981-2010, 30 year average rainfall for Atlanta at 49.71”, Athens at 46.33”, Macon at 45.68” and Columbus at 46.75” as of the end of March 2015.   The highest in 30 years was Columbus in 2009 at 80.20”.The lowest was Columbus in 1999 at 26.39”. http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ffc/?n=rainfall_scorecard

If this data applies to other areas of Georgia, we should expect our average rainfall to remain around 47” a year.  

The southeast US receives the most rainfall, so building more reservoirs would buttress Georgia from future droughts.  We didn’t build any.  Our lakes are full and I’m sure we could fill a reservoir if we had a new one. 

As priorities go, I would put water close to the top of state governments’ responsibilities.  We are a farm state and we do better than most, but I would rather be way ahead of the game on water.

I also don’t trust the federal government to not give our water away to the UN, so I would like to see the states to assume control and assure that property owners will keep their water rights.  Without water rights, property rights don’t exist.

In Western states, there are battles going on over water.  It looks like they need to build reservoirs as well and stop the flow to the Pacific Ocean.  Their rainfall is closer to 20” per year, so they may need to build pipelines and buy water from Canada and build desalination plants on the coast.

I expect to see the escape from California to continue as Gov. Brown imposes his draconian water restrictions. I urge everyone with common sense and a spine to move to California and run for the state legislature.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader