Southern Company makes more money in the drought

On January the 24, I blogged about the drought in Georgia. Georgia is enduring one of the worst droughts in its history.

Yet, Lake Lanier wasn't used as a holding tank for drinking water.

As I stated on the 24th, in my opinion, Lake Lanier was drained to provide cooling water to the Joesph M. Farley Nuclear Plant on the Chattahoochee River just east of Dothan, Alabama.

As noted in the April 23, 1998 Federal Register, Farley evaporates 18,093 gallons per minute of the water it draws from the Chattahoochee. Farley draws 90,000 gallons per minute from the Chattahoochee. [Those are old figures but the only public figures that I can verify. Farley now operates at a higher level of production, in my humble opinion. However, I cannot complete the calculations to support that conclusion. I cannot convert megawatts thermo to megawatts electricity.]

That means over 20 percent of the free water taken from the Chattahoochee River is lost to the atmosphere. The remaining water is sent back to the river at a temperature of at least 96 degrees.

This information can be verified online at the EPA website, here.

The Southern Company reported a profit increase for 2007 of nearly 10 percent while only increasing its customer base by only 1 percent.

That increase in profit came from Lake Lanier at the expense of jobs, business, and local government.

Thanks, Sonny, Casey, and the Southern Company.