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Georgia Farmers Feel Heat Of Record Drought

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By GREG BLUESTEIN, The Associated Press

Published: November 15, 2007

CAMILLA, Ga. - Southwest Georgia is one of the most productive agricultural regions in Dixie, but you wouldn't know it from the soil under the corn, peanuts and cotton. It can be sandy, pebbly, and doesn't hold water very well.

That begins to explain why irrigation is so vital here - and why the mere suggestion that some of the region's water might be taken away fills folks with fear and resentment.

With a historic drought gripping the Southeast, Georgia farmers are worried that their needs will be sacrificed to those of Atlanta - a city of runaway growth and seemingly unquenchable thirst - or water-guzzling Florida.

"Atlanta needs to take a hard look at what's happening in the metro area," said Bubba Johnson, 68, a farmer who grows cotton and corn. "There's going to be a heck of a battle if they try to come down here to get the water."

The drought has forced much of the state to enact unprecedented watering restrictions, and legislative leaders want to build more state reservoirs. Some, including Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, have floated the idea of transferring water to Atlanta from other places via pipelines.

Franklin has not specifically mentioned pumping water out of southwest Georgia's Flint River or its tributaries, but the possibility has stoked the long-standing tension between the big city and the countryside.

"I don't want to throw a brick at Atlanta. But I feel like we're getting squeezed between entities as everyone competes for water," said Glenn Cox, a farmer in Camilla. "We just don't have enough clout. There are more trees in this plot of land than there are people in this county."

The Valdosta Daily Times lashed out at Atlanta in an editorial, accusing it of hogging water while crops burn in the fields. Atlanta politicians, it said, "can't bring themselves to tell their greedy constituents complaining about the low flows in their toilets this week that perhaps if they didn't have six bathrooms, it might ease the situation a bit. That watering your lawn isn't as important as watering crops. Or that their greedy overbuilding has taxed their supplies of natural resources beyond their capabilities."

Between 1990 and 2000, Atlanta added more than 1 million people and its water use climbed 30 percent to about 420 million gallons a day. Now, metro Atlanta has roughly 5 million people and projects more than 2 million more by 2030, when water use could climb past 700 million gallons a day.

Farmers have more to fear than Atlanta as they watch the Army Corps of Engineers send water downstream to Florida and Alabama to run power plants and sustain federally protected mussels.

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