All of the major water users from our basin

The AJC has put together a nice map showing all of the major users (water systems, industrial, power plants and recreational) along the Chattahoochee river basin — 36 users highlighted in all.

Seeing this helps to explain why so much water is released from Lanier each day. The water from there needs to feed all of those places and still be at 5,000 cfs (3.2 billion gallons/day) when it is in Florida.

However, there are many small creeks and rivers that feed into the river to help reach the 5,000 cfs flow. The problem is that all of those rivers are running below normal, which means they have to drain even more water from Lanier to help make up for it.

The 16% reduction that may or may not happen starting today would be a reduction in that 5,000 cfs mandate, lowering it 4200 cfs. This would mean that the releases from Lanier could be reduced a bit, though they might see a slow increase after that to compensate for less and less help from the other rivers feeding into the Chattahoochee.