With an extreme drought hitting DeKalb and reports that Lake Lanier could have only three months of water remaining, some county officials are proposing stricter sanctions on its use.

Commissioner Jeff Rader, chair of the of the Land Use & Planning Committee, presented short and long term plans this week to deal with the ongoing crisis.

Included in the proposals are locking all irrigation water meters, revising developments’ water usage plans, buying back wasteful toilets which would be replaced by more efficient ones and adopting a water rate structure that charges customers more per gallon when they use more than normal.

Adoption of a new water rate structure could come as early as Oct. 23. [See water rates story]

The report comes amid discussions at the state level to ban all outdoor watering, including at businesses and industrial sites, that would be some of the most restrictive ever imposed in U.S. history.

Director of the county’s Department of Watershed Management Francis Kung’u is afraid people do not realize what’s happening. He said state and local governments should “be looking at this much more seriously.”

“The drought is very severe, it’s putting a lot of stress on our water supply,” Kung’u said. “We [metro Atlanta] need to be working together – everyone is doing their own thing. Let the grass dry out and die. It’s a choice between being able to drink clean water or having a green lawn.”

DeKalb is almost two feet below normal rainfall for the year. Meanwhile, meteorologists are predicting a dry fall and winter for the area.

CEO Vernon Jones said Rader is getting ahead of himself. He called Rader’s measure a “knee-jerk” reaction.

“It defeats the purpose if we’re conserving, but other counties aren’t,” said Jones. “We all drink from the same trough [Chattanooga River]. There should be a regional approach. We need to pull in neighboring counties.”

One of the problems said Rader and Kung’u is the fact that almost 20 percent of DeKalb’s drinking water can’t be unaccounted for – most leaks out of pipes and is lost. If the loss were cut to 10 percent, the county would save 10 million gallons a day.

“DeKalb should establish a target for lost water that is lower than the regional average of nine percent,” Rader said. “This will require costly maintenance and replacement, but is the biggest thing we can do to reduce wasting water.”

Kung’u, who has a doctorate in water management, said the county and the region should be building more reservoirs.

“We need to build more reservoirs and lakes,” Kung’u said. “When it rains, we need to collect it. Lake Lanier and Altoona are based on consumption designs more than 50 years old.”

As commissioners debate raising water and sewer rates to cover the costs of $1.4 billion in needs, Kung’u said he will propose a project to reuse wastewater for drinking and bathing.

“We should have been doing this 10 years ago,” he said.

The Rader proposal would also eliminate septic tanks where sewer is available. “These systems can pollute streams, and don’t return water to the river system,” said Rader. “Within five years, these systems must hook up to the sewer system.”

The county, which just opened a new water treatment plant near Doraville, maintains about a billion gallons of water in three reservoirs at the plant. In an emergency, it could meet residents’ needs for about 10 days.

Rader said citizens need to act now.

“DeKalb must also adopt a stronger stewardship ethic toward this essential resource,” he said. “And there couldn’t be a better time than now. Given the severity of the drought, we should expedite some of these measures.”