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Impact on Environment and Quality of Life Water

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers water experts say that metro Atlanta is growing so fast that it is now taking all the water that Lake Lanier and the Chattahoochee River can provide, decades before it was expected to have reached that limit. In fact, metro Atlanta exceeded expected water use for 2030 during some of 1999 and 2000. South Carolina and Tennessee have warned there will be major battles if Atlanta tries to tap the Savannah or Tennessee river systems.8 The area is now faced with the need to find alternate sources of water long before anyone expected it would need to.

Rapid development in Atlanta is responsible for sending huge amounts of polluted runoff directly into streams and rivers. In Atlanta, 57 billion to 133 billion gallons of tainted water flows from paved areas directly into surface waters each year.9

Traffic: As population growth put more traffic on the roads, the average commute for Georgia residents increased 22 percent during the 1990s, to 28 minutes in 2000.10,11 Metro Atlanta had the third-longest one-way commute -- 31 minutes -- among the nation's largest metro areas, according to the 2000 census. Gridlock cost metro Atlanta $1.9 billion in time and fuel in 2000Ñ$1,350 per motorist.12 The number of miles driven each day on metro Atlanta roads is expected to rise by about 42 million miles by 2025 about half the distance from the Earth to the sun.

Carl Patton, vice chairman for transportation of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, predicts that by 2010, Atlantans will spend more time in traffic than at home.14 Traffic on I-95 is increasing by seven percent annually,15 and the average volume of commuters on Ga.-400 has grown more than 48 percent since 1994.16

Disappearing open space: Every day, 50 acres of Georgia's farmland and open space are lost to development.17 Of the 74,542 acres of state parkland in Georgia, 8,212 are endangered by sprawl, commercial and residential development, and traffic, according to the National Park Trust.18 About two-thirds of the trees in the Atlanta area have been cut down by development, reports the Georgia Conservancy

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