Atlanta
Georgia, Drought and the Future - A2WH.com
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Why Atlanta should care now
The great drought of 2007 has eased for
the Atlanta area so much of the public attention has
abated. The reality is that Atlanta and several other
southern cities are living beyond their water budget. They
face economic decline if new housing and development falls so they are
strongly motivated to continue development even if it is clear that
they do not have water resources necessary to meet their long term
demands.
Large businesses have already been forced to shut down factories and
reduce production due to water shortages. These work stoppages
cost money sometimes millions of dollars per day. CEO's are
getting smarter about water dependencies and are much less likely to
locate their next major facility in an area that can not guarantee
adequate water. This means that failure to adequately
plan a water supply that can keep industry working even during the
worst drought will cost people jobs as CEO's choose other cities.
The water shortage will ultimately rise again during the next drought
and each time it will become more expensive. The citizens may not
even know how many thousands of jobs are lost due to the reputation of
a region for not being able to deliver water. Large scale water
systems of any type require time and massive amounts of
capital. That means that by the time a drought hits
it will be too late to implement these infrastructure
projects. They must be started 3 to 10 years ahead of need
if they are to help offset the impact of the next drought.
A2WH is emerging technology that could ultimately address this issue
and make Atlanta more immune to drought. It is only 1 technology
of many but it can be an important component of an overall
solution. The challenge is that emergent technologies must
be proved at scale in the region before they can be considered for
large scale deployment. This takes even more time so you
can not wait until the next drought.
How A2WH can save the Economic Future for Atlanta GA
Our A2WH Solar Thermal system which extracts water from air would need
about 4.7 sq miles to produce 17 million gallons of water per day. The
humidity around Atlanta is high and sunshine is plentiful so the A2WH
system would work great. The system is immune to droughts and consumes
no electricity or fuel.
Wikipedia shows the City of Atlanta at 132.4 sq miles and the
metropolitan area at 8,376 sq miles so we would only need 4% of
the city space or less than 0.06% of the urban space to deliver the
water.
This could be placed uphill from the city and generate power on the way
down. It would almost certainly be cheaper trucking water in for any
length of time. It would provide a better ROI than mothballing the city
or loosing the industry.
The estimated cost would be about $3.4 billion USD (not including
the land). The Brookings Institution shows Atlanta’s 2005 GDP
worth
$242B so a 3% drop in the local GDP driven by a water shortage would
yield a GDP drop of 7.26 billion per year or 108.9 billion
over 15 years. The real cost is in jobs lost and decreased property
values but a 10% loss of tax revenue based on the lost GDP would
cost local and state government enough to pay for the A2WH system 3
times over.
In an era of 100 billion dollar bailouts to save financial institutions
it seems like a 3.4 billion investment to protect the economic
viability of a region like Atlanta would be a good investment.
Desalination Double Wammy
During the 2007 drought multiple
nuclear power plants came very close to shutting down due to a
lack of power. Even coal based power plants consume
water. According to a recent report published by the
DOE the best thermal electric plants consume 0.3 gallons per KWh
produced with some nuclear plants consuming many times
more. Desalination plants consume large
amounts of power and simply can not run without it. Desalination plants are normally only cost effective when the can be
built right next to the power plants so they can obtain cheap power and
re-use the power plants outflow pipes. The issue occurs
when water shortages shut down power plants it also creates a crisis
for the power so the same drought that shuts down the power plant can
also prevent the desalination plan from operating.
The net result is that a sufficient drought may prevent the
desalination plants from receiving adequate power to operate. Those
power plants which use sea water for cooling are generally immune
to this but in Georgia there where 3 nuclear plants at risk from
the 2007 drought. If they shut down all the power consumers in
Georgia are going to be competing with the coastal desalt plants for
power from the coastal power facilities. As a result the Georgia
citizens may be making a hard decision between running a light bulb or
having something to drink.
A2WH runs without any grid power. If it is installed in the
mountains above cities it can even generate power as the water flows
downhill to the cities. It will be delivering water and
power long after the desalt plants are idled because their power
sources have insufficient water to operate.
Related articles
Thanks Joe Ellsworth
A2WH.com
206-601-2985
Reference
....
.... Sydney
Australia
(C) Joseph
Ellsworth Nov 2008 All Rights Reserved