Snow blow.
As northern Georgia suffers through a monumental drought and the toughest water restrictions ever imposed, Stone Mountain is using up to 38 gallons of water a minute — for 12 to 18 hours a day for the next month — to make snow. Labels: controversial, local news, weather
On the day Gov. Sonny Perdue took the state's water conservation efforts indoors and declared October "Take A Shorter Shower" month, the park was embarking on a whole new way to burn through the state's shrinking supply of H2O.
They started making snow Tuesday — in 80 degree weather. It will take more than a million gallons of water to complete the job.
By opening day Nov. 10, working night and day, crews at the park will have built what's billed as Coca-Cola Snow Mountain on the lawn behind Memorial Hall. Where crowds gather during the summer to watch the park's laser show, kids and families will be tubing down a 400-foot-long slope of ice and snow.
It didn't matter Tuesday that the temperature was about 50 degrees above freezing, said Albert Bronander, president of Snow Magic, the company that has partnered with the park to produce the snowy wonderland. The key is to make the snow faster than mother nature can melt it — and use lots of water. With machinery that can produce 200 tons of snow a day, that's not a problem, said Bronander, motioning at a 5-foot-tall hill of the slushy white stuff.
At maximum production, the snow maker will use 38 gallons of municipal water a minute. The machinery will operate 18 hours a day. In 30 days, the 1.2 million gallons of water will produce a 2-foot-thick layer of ice to form the slope's base.
Bronander said the park is using water drawn from DeKalb County's water lines instead of pulling it from the park's lake — as is the park's golf course — because "we want the water to be pure white." The snow-making venture comes at a time when, across town, Six Flags Park last week closed two of its water rides — Splashwater Falls and Thunder River — in response to the governor's statewide watering ban.
Park marketing manager Ryan Kilpatrick said Tuesday when Six Flags closes for the season at the end of October, its water use will be cut 80 percent. He declined to say how much water the park uses during peak summer season.
Jeff Bollig, spokesman for Lawrence, Kansas-based Golf Course Superintendents Association of America said that the amount of water the park is using a day to produce snow — about 41,000 gallons — is a fraction of what golf courses in Atlanta use during the average summer day when restrictions aren't in effect, as they are now (courses are limited to watering greens).
"Georgia courses use about 215,000 gallons a day," Bollig said. "But we like to put that into perspective. On the average day, this country uses 408 billion gallons of water. What golf course uses is less than one half of one percent of that." Also, the vast majority — 86 percent — of golf courses supply their own water instead of taping into municipal drinking water.
Christine Parker, public relations manager for Stone Mountain, said the park is abiding by watering restrictions and doing what it can to conserve. The Coca-Cola Snow Mountain attraction has been in the works for almost a year.
"We've already sold tickets, and we can't just stop," she said. "That would be like a water park just deciding to turn off the faucets."
In his declaration for the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority's waterSmart program, Gov. Perdue said people who take shorter showers can save 3-7 gallons of water per shower. That adds up to more than 2,000 gallons per person over the course of a year — or 52 minutes worth of snow making at Stone Mountain.
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