Allatoona Lake approved for reallocation and reuse
On August 30, 2021, the Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works, Jaime A. Pinkham, approved a reallocation report for Allatoona Lake in northwest Georgia. The Record of Decision (“ROD”) authorizes a reallocation of storage to meet projected 2050 demands for the City of Cartersville, Georgia. It also authorizes full credit for “return flows” and other “made inflows” allocated to the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority by the State of Georgia. In addition to its obvious importance to the State of Georgia and Georgia’s Water Supply Providers, who first requested this reallocation in 1981, this decision reflects a sea change in Corps policy regarding return flows and the primacy of State water allocation decisions. It is the second decision in the past year -- following a 2020 decision benefiting the City of Murfreesboro at J. Percy Priest Reservoir in Tennessee -- in which the Corps has deferred to a State’s allocation of return flows to water supply users. Kudos to NWSA Members, the City of Murfreesboro and Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority, for their successful efforts!!
To review the Record of Decision on the Allatoona Lake reallocation, click on the link below.
Allatoona Lake Water Supply Storage Reallocation Study
For more information on the Allatoona reallocation and other decisions in the ROD, please contact any of the following NWSA members:
Glenn Page, GM, Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority, gpage@ccmwa.org
Katherine Zitsch, Atlanta Regional Commission, kzitsch@atlantaregional.org
Lewis Jones, King & Spalding, lbjones@kslaw.com