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Georgia Loses Ground In Water Feud With Florida, Alabama

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The Associated Press

Published: August 13, 2008

WASHINGTON - Georgia received another setback Tuesday in its water feud with Alabama and Florida as a judge said he must decide whether the Atlanta region has authority to continue using Lake Lanier as its main water source.

That fundamental question, U.S. District Judge Paul A. Magnuson said, could render other legal questions in the court battle "obsolete" and allow it to be resolved as early as January. He also said an appeals court ruling this year that invalidated some of Georgia's rights to Lanier would "undoubtedly affect" the case.

Magnuson's decision came in response to a motion from Florida and Alabama in a nearly 20-year court fight over the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basin. The case is being heard in a U.S. District Court in Jacksonville.

Florida and Alabama say Georgia is withholding too much water from Lanier, drying up river flows into their states that support power plants, commercial fisheries and industrial users such as paper mills. The case also involves claims that the lake withdrawals are threatening endangered mussels and sturgeon in the rivers.

Georgia argues it isn't getting enough water from the reservoir. As a record drought threatened drinking water supplies last year, it pressed the federal government for more. The governors of the three states tried to work out a compromise this year but failed.

In February, Alabama and Florida won a major victory in a related case when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington threw out an agreement that would have let Georgia expand its use of Lanier for water supplies.

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