Stakeholders’ proposals might settle tri-state ‘Water Wars’ dispute out of court

ALBANY — For more than 25 years, Georgia, Alabama and Florida have been embroiled in legal battles over the equitable distribution of the waters of the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee, and Flint River Basin. The major bone of contention is the regulation of water flow from Lake Lanier to Alabama and Florida.

The issue has been in and out of federal court with suits and counter suits since 1990. Florida currently has a pending lawsuit against Georgia filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013.

Woody Hicks, a member of the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee, Flint Stakeholders, grew weary of the legal wrangling. The group of 56 people met last week in Apalachicola and agreed to a Sustainable Water Management Plan (SWMP). The proposal will be presented to Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal and the U.S. Corps of Engineers in an effort to help settle the matter.

“Basically the Georgia caucus has spent the last five years working with the ACF with the hope that we can resolve this conflict outside of the court system,” Hicks said at the Dougherty Rotary Club luncheon Tuesday. “We think we have found a solution based to the individual stakeholders’ goals. We operated on consensus, so every vote had to be unanimous. With 56 different opinions, we all had to reach solutions we could live with.”

Hicks said the stakeholders are trying to make four different groups of people happy — Atlanta, which needs the water of Lake Lanier for drinking; Georgia and Alabama, which need the Chattahootchee to be deep enough to ensure a flow of barge traffic; Albany, which needs the water for agricultural irrigation and power generation; and Florida, which needs a flow of fresh water into Apalachicola Bay to sustain the region’s lucrative oyster industry.

Atlanta, Hicks said, is catching much of the heat for the dwindling southerly flow of water. “Atlanta is a big target and is easy to shoot at.”

Last Wednesday the ACF released its report containing a number of recommendations to end the dispute.

The major recommendations are:

— Alabama, Florida and Georgia should collaboratively establish a transboundary water management institution to serve as a data clearinghouse; facilitate coordination, consensus building and conflict resolution; and support development of basin-level water management plans.

— Each state should pursue and achieve sustainable water use and return policies. Water users throughout the basin should identify and implement conservation measures and water efficient policies. Tracking and reporting is critical to achieve actual improvements.

— The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should consider adopting the following, as a package of changes, to its management of the ACF reservoirs to utilize storage more efficiently during ordinary conditions, mitigate drought impacts, and promptly restore conditions after droughts. The suggested changes include:

— Raise the winter pool 4.5 feet at West Point Lake to increase water storage that can be used to provide benefits basin-wide.

— Define new zones to coincide with the USACE reservoir recreational impact zones and then only release water from an upstream reservoir when the downstream reservoir is in a lower zone.

— Adjust hydropower release requirements to achieve more operational flexibility with respect to other water uses.

— Provide two pulsed releases – in May and July – timed to support environmental flow requirements, improved navigation conditions in the Apalachicola River, and salinity regimes favorable to oysters in the Apalachicola Bay.

— The Army Corps of Engineers should study and, if feasible, implement a 2-foot increase in the pool level at Lake Lanier, increasing water storage by 7 percent, to the benefit of all users in the basin.

— Local, state and federal decision makers should develop consistent drought management plans that define drought conditions, identify drought response triggers, delineates responsibilities of various water use sectors and documents changes in operational strategies in response to drought conditions. ACFS further encourages USACE to incorporate predictive drought indicators into the pending revision of the Water Control Manual.

— Various state and federal agencies should develop more and more consistent information about the river basin and bay to promote better decision making in the future. ACFS encountered challenging gaps in scientific and technical information on the basin during the course of its work and suggests a specific list of studies that, if completed, would support better decision-making in the future.

“It is entirely possible to manage and share the water in this river basin, but we all need to work together to accomplish that,” ACFS Board Chair Betty Webb said in a news release. “Our plan lights a path to changing the way we store water and operate the reservoir system, combined with smarter approaches to using water, and improving stream flows in the river basin and Apalachicola Bay.”

After dragging on for more than 25 years, Hicks said, “each region has different concerns. But what we all have in common is that how all our economy flourish depends on water.”