Florida’s legal challenge could drown future Atlanta growth | www.myajc.com

Florida wants to turn back Metro Atlanta’s clock to 1992 when the population stood at 3 million, Maynard Jackson was mayor, and the Olympics were a gleam in the region’s collective eye.

In the latest salvo of the water wars, Florida Gov. Rick Scott recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to cork Atlanta’s water usage to levels last seen two decades ago – less than half what’s likely to be needed in the future.

“Growth would come to a screeching halt,” said Bob Kerr, a Georgia negotiator in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the interstate water dispute.

If Florida prevails, Atlanta’s economic development – the 15-county region predicts a population of 7.5 million by 2035 – could take a multi-billion dollar annual hit. No new water permits, for example, means no new housing tracts, industries or skyscrapers.

But water conservation efforts currently underway could convince the Supreme Court that Atlanta is capable of managing water without onerous restrictions, water law experts say.

In August, Gov. Scott filed the court documents aimed at getting more Chattahoochee water flowing downstream from Atlanta to the Appalachicola Bay, where the oyster industry has been decimated by low water levels. The federal government had earlier declared the bay, home to 10 percent of the nation’s oyster crop, a fishery disaster.

Scott blamed Georgia’s “unmitigated and unsustainable upstream consumption of water,” and more than two decades of failed water negotiations, for the bay’s plight. Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal labeled his Florida counterpart’s broadside “a frivolous waste of time and money.”

Georgia is preparing its legal response with the goal of convincing the Supreme Court to decline to take the case. The court, though, has frequently accepted interstate battles over the “equitable apportionment” of water.

“It’s very credible – it’s about as serious as a heart attack,” said George William Sherk, a water law attorney who worked on Georgia’s case in the mid-1990s. “The court has made it explicitly clear that a state does not have the right to waste water supply.”

Last year, though, the court declined to review a decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals allowing metro Atlanta to tap Lake Lanier, which is fed by the Chattahoochee and serves as the region’s major water source. Georgia was sitting pretty, convinced it had won a water-tight victory.

But Florida now wants the court to appoint a so-called special master to weigh competing claims and mandate a steady flow of water from Georgia into Florida. Alabama, the third water war combatant, has yet to take a position on the latest legal maneuver.

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