Chattahoochee River is running through Congress | Opinion | Columbus Ledger Enquirer

A congressional “water projects bill” is officially about water allocation from federal reservoirs. What it’s specifically about is the Chattahoochee River.

The dispute familiarly (and inaccurately) known as the “interstate water war” has made a few back-and-forth bounces through the federal court system. Now it’s bouncing around in the U.S. Senate. Early drafts of the 2013 Water Resources Development Act included a provision pushed by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., that would require congressional approval if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requested a municipal or industrial water withdrawal increase of 5 percent or more from any federal impoundment.

For “municipal” read Atlanta, and for “federal impoundment” read Lake Lanier, currently Ground Zero in the upstream-downstream water dispute. Most of us know at least the short version: After years of haggling, a federal court ruling a few years ago held that Lake Lanier, a federal reservoir, was not built to supply water for Atlanta — a ruling overturned by a federal appeals court.

Sessions’ purpose, clearly (and rightly), was to keep the latter ruling from becoming in effect a perpetual and unlimited right of water access for metro Atlanta at the expense of everybody downstream.

Enter Georgia’s Senate delegation. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson announced that they had managed to get that restriction removed from the bill.

Georgia’s delegation wants more water for Atlanta; Alabama and Florida say Atlanta already uses too much, causing low flows and concentrated pollution downriver; Rubio’s amendment cites “the economic havoc that decreased water flows have created for the Apalachicola Bay’s once vibrant oyster industry.”

Caught in the middle — literally, in this case — are Columbus and every other Chattahoochee River community between Atlanta and the Alabama line. (Who’s speaking for us in all this? Good question.)

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