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By Guest Columnist SANDY TUCKER, Georgia field supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Atlanta sits near the headwaters of every river it depends on. It’s the nation’s largest metropolitan region, with the smallest area from which to pull water.

Without the water storage provided by Lake Lanier on the Chattahoochee River — and to a lesser extent, Lake Allatoona on the Etowah River — metro Atlanta could not have grown its current population of more than 5 million.

So it’s easy to understand why leaders say we need to build more reservoirs to ensure

By Guest Columnist JOHN NAUGLE, an advocate for declaring Atlanta — the City of Peace.

As we finish celebrating 01/01/11, we are beginning the second decade of the thousand-year period of human history called: The Peace Millennium (Years 2000-3000).

Atlanta, how will you grow in this special year and new decade? In our organization’s opinion, Atlanta is the best positioned city on Earth to excel and become a beacon of peace to the entire world. This dream, born in the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and “I Have A Dream”, can soon enough experience reality.

As civic, government and business leaders unite to build the global peace legacy of Dr. King’s birth city it will be transformed. The City of Atlanta will fulfill its great

By Guest Columnist EVERETTE HARVEY THOMPSON, Southern Regional director for Amnesty International USA in Atlanta, Ga.

The plight of China’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo is taking place in the glare of world publicity, but his terrible situation is not uncommon. Millions worldwide suffer cruel persecution, their freedom and lives in peril, while governments deny their fundamental rights as human beings.

As we mark International Human Rights Day, people are still tortured or ill-treated in at least 111 countries; freedom of expression is restricted in at least 96 countries; and prisoners of conscience are held in at least 48 countries, according to Amnesty International’s

By Guest Columnist KEVIN GREEN, executive director of the Clean Air Campaign

Since breathing is one of the great pleasures in life, we thought we would take a minute to assess how this year’s smog season has gone, how it compares to years prior and where we may be heading.

To start with the obvious, this summer has been HOT – one of the warmest Georgia summers on record. And the heat affects more than just our thermostats. Ground-level ozone is formed when pollutants mix with heat and sunlight, which is why we have a “smog season” in Georgia, the five-month period from May 1- Sept 30. As cooler temperatures and shorter days move onto the horizon, so too does the end of when we are most likely to see days of increased air pollution.

By Guest Columnist JOE WINTER, co-founder of C4 Atlanta, a non-profit arts service organization.

You hear about it, empathize with it, but it never hits home until it happens to you: getting laid off from your job.

My co-worker Jessyca and I had just wrapped up a major annual project. She and I had received phone calls over the weekend to come to the office for a meeting early on Monday morning, April 5, but with no explanation of the agenda for the meeting.

I walked in to the office. There were six of us: me, my two co-workers, and the board “triumvirate:” the co-presidents and the treasurer who was also the consultant.

The co-presidents immediately turned the meeting over

By Guest Columnist MICHAEL DAILEY, a business litigation attorney who is active with several environmental organizations in Georgia.

Lost in the uproar which followed Rep. Joe Barton’s now-famous apology to British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward, for what Barton alleged was a White House “shakedown” of his company leading to the establishment of a $20 Billion escrow fund, was the original Republican scriptwriter for Barton’s ire – Representative Tom Price M.D. of Georgia.

Only hours before Barton unleashed his surprising outpouring of sympathy for the company responsible for delivering America’s foremost environmental disaster, Rep. Price, speaking as Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, issued a statement