On Thursday night, Gwinnett County chairman Charlotte Nash spoke to the tea party group in Lawrenceville at Briscoe field. She talked about a number of issues facing the county, and among the most important is still Gwinnett’s water supply. Not long ago this topic drew a great deal of attention, but recently with all the rain we’ve had the issue seems less important. Chairman Nash reminded us know that the issue is still a major concern, and will resurface once drier conditions return. One of the things she’s concerned about is that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case from Florida involving the amount of water release from Lake Lanier (Gwinnett’s primary water source) that makes its way eventually into their state. One of the questions that the Court must decide is whether the county will get credit for the millions of gallons of treated water that they put back into the lake. If the county gets credit for this water, it will greatly increase amount of water available to go in at citizens – the County has a permit which only allows them to withdraw a certain amount of water every day.
One of the attendees asked about the emergency alert system that was promised to be installed with the passage of a SPLOST several years ago. Chairman Nash said that this is indeed in the works. The schools have been discussing options and proposals were being investigated. It’s possible some systems could be up and going within the next 12 months. In addition to offering an easy way to instantly alert Gwinnett County that incident is happening inside the school, one of the most important aspects of the system will be the fact that emergency personnel will have immediate access to all of the cameras within the school which will allow them to assess the situation before they decide to enter.