Monday, September 08, 2008
Published Sunday, August 03, 2008 in Opinion
Downstream view of tri-state water wars
Editorial
Editor's note: Today's guest editorial is from the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.
Alabama and Florida say Georgia (meaning Atlanta) is hogging water that ought to be shared.
Georgia (meaning Atlanta) says Florida and Alabama are being bad neighbors who care more about mussels and sturgeon than about people (meaning Atlanta).
Communities like Columbus and LaGrange, which are in Georgia but aren't Atlanta, wonder if anybody speaks for us, and have all but concluded after a quarter-century of this debate that nobody does or will.
There have been so many claims and counterclaims -- principally, though not exclusively, about the effects of metro Atlanta growth on water supply and demand -- that the truth about riparian rights and realities has gotten all but lost, and it's going to take something and somebody other than the competing stakeholders to find it. If nothing else about this murky but critical issue is clear, the need for an independent water study is. The fight over water is now a matter of too much politics and too little science.
Three members of Florida's congressional delegation -- Sens. Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez and Rep. Allen Boyd -- have called for a federally funded study of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint water basin by the National Academy of Sciences.
It's a good idea; Georgia Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch might have a better one. Given the urgency of the issue, heightened by the duration of a drought that has increased tensions among the parties involved, Couch thinks the study could get done a lot sooner if the three states fund it themselves.
"The clock is ticking, and we might try to approach commissioning that study through a three-way agreement between the states and move down the road on it quicker," Couch, originally from Columbus, said.
If Alabama, Florida and Georgia can come together on a funding formula for a genuinely independent study (and there's no reason to believe the National Academy would deliver anything but), and if indeed that would speed up the process, so much the better.
There's a lot at stake for millions of people. There's Atlanta's legitimate need for enough water to sustain a major American city. There are the water needs of every community and industry downstream, those in Georgia as well as in Alabama and Florida. There are economic concerns and environmental concerns, and -- the simplistic and intellectually dishonest "people versus mussels" sound bite notwithstanding -- sometimes the two are one and the same. Ask an Apalachicola Bay oysterman.
A factual, dispassionate assessment of the facts about water in this region is literally decades overdue. The sooner that can happen, the better.