City Hopping Mad After Judge Rules Against Using Lake Lanier For Atlanta Water Supply - NYT

[hatrack]

EDIT

A recent court defeat has left Atlanta howling that its enemies, including Alabama and Florida, are trying to choke off the city’s prosperity, if not out of sheer spite then at least the misguided notion that jobs and money would flow to them instead. The conflict is the timeworn rural-versus-urban enmity writ large, a battle over water that has pitted Atlanta against its neighbors in and out of Georgia. “The only motivation is political,” Charles Krautler, the director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, said of the fight. “We don’t have as good of spin doctors as they do. It’s easy to point the finger at big bad Atlanta.”

Ostensibly, the war among the three states is about a river basin that supplies the taps of 3.5 million people in metropolitan Atlanta before it flows down the Alabama-Georgia state line and into the Florida Panhandle. Each state says the others are demanding too much water. But many experts say there is no actual scarcity — the system, managed properly, could meet the needs of users along the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers, including power companies, farmers and oystermen. Still, the three states have spent nearly 20 years battling over the allocation of the water. And now, no matter their motive, Alabama and Florida have the law squarely on their side. On July 17, Judge Paul A. Magnuson of Federal District Court agreed with their argument that supplying water to Atlanta was not an authorized use of Lake Sidney Lanier, the federal reservoir northeast of the city at the headwaters of the river basin.

For decades, Judge Magnuson ruled, the Army Corps of Engineers had illegally managed the Buford Dam, which created the lake beginning in 1956, to provide the Atlanta region with drinking water. He said Congress built the dam only for navigation, flood control and hydropower. The 97-page ruling largely faults the corps for overstepping its authority but also suggests that Georgia knew for decades that Congressional approval was needed.

Govs. Charlie Crist of Florida and Bob Riley of Alabama, both Republicans, hailed the decision. "Atlanta has based its growth on the idea that it could take whatever water it wanted, whenever it wanted it, and that the downstream states would simply have to make do with less,” Mr. Riley said. After the court’s ruling, he added, “this massive illegal water grab will be coming to an end.” Alabama officials say that they are not trying to prevent Atlanta from growing but that they want the city to pay for the infrastructure that growth requires. In 1948, the mayor of Atlanta declined to contribute money to the construction of the Lake Lanier dam, arguing that the city would not need the water.

EDIT

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/16water.html?_r=1&ref=earth

[spin]

1. Since I live in Florida, this is good news. (n/t)

[freethought]

2. Atlanta only has itself to blame

I read a great article in "Atlantic Monthly" about Atlanta's water woes. During the 90s, Atlanta's political leaders could not say "NO" to any kind of commercial/residential development of nearly any kind. Building permits were issued for just about anything. Water supply managers tried to sound the alarm that development was overtaking the city's ability to supply water. There were no plans being drawn up to develop new water supplies and infastructure and there were almost no controls on its usage. In parts of Atlanta every bedroom had its own bathroom and a nice, lush green lawn was practically an unwritten law.
Now, here Atlanta is trying to play catch-up by taking water from other states. T.S. for them.

[morningglory]

3. In the midst of the worst drought, the sprinklers on the golf courses never stop.

When there is no drought, and it is actually raining at the time, the sprinklers twirl around endlessly. They destroy 50 or so acres of forest every day around Atlanta,build houses, put in sod, and start sprinkling. They got no brain at all up there. They deserve some kind of karmic punishment.