ATLANTA — State and federal officials are announcing that Lake Sidney Lanier, which is this city’s main water source, has about a three-month supply left, according to an October 11 story in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

State Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch said in the story, “We’ve never experienced this situation before.” Couch will give Gov. Sonny Perdue a list of options to further restrict water usage and a report on estimated job losses from the cutbacks.

Couch said in the story, “There has to be a balance between determining how much water we can conserve against how much lost jobs and lost economy there is. You don’t do that lightly.”

Landscapers already have suffered from the outdoor watering ban issued in September. Mary Kay Woodworth of the Urban Agriculture Council trade group said in the story, “Immediately, employees were laid off. Contracts waiting on signatures — from $3,000 jobs to $150,000 installations — were canceled.”

PepsiCo’s Gatorade plant, Atlanta’s biggest water user, is coming up with ways to cut back on water usage within the next 30 days. A Coca-Cola syrup plant has already cut back on water usage under a corporate conservation plan.

Water providers are asking other big users to voluntarily cut down on water use and are implementing emergency plans that include pumping water from “unprecedented depths” of Lake Sidney Lanier, which is owned and operated by the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the Chattahoochee River, the story said.

More than a billion gallons are withdrawn from the lake a day, a majority of which is pumped into West Point Lake, flowing into Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Corps releases the water to operate a coal-fired power plant and to protect two mussel species found in a Florida river.

For more than a year, state and regional representatives have asked the Corps to reconsider the water releases, but the Corps has refused.

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