Water trial ends, but ‘jury’ is still out
The month-long water lawsuit between Florida and Georgia is over, as of last Thursday.
Who won? We don’t know that yet.
In fact, the only person who comes close to knowing is Maine attorney Ralph Lancaster, the special master appointed to preside over this case. And even his recommendations must be approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Technically, this has been a Supreme Court case from the outset. Yet it hasn’t been heard in Washington, but in Portland, Me., Lancaster’s home turf. And on Thursday, he told attorneys for both states that he had reached his conclusions and that one or both states wouldn’t like them.
“Please settle this blasted thing,” he said. “I can guarantee you that at least one of you is going to be unhappy with my recommendation — and perhaps both of you.”
The arguments are all too well known by now: Florida claims overconsumption of water in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) water basin, mostly due to the rapid growth of metro Atlanta, has harmed the oyster and fishing industries of Apalachicola Bay in the Florida panhandle. Georgia counters that this state does not consume a disproportionate amount of water, and that natural factors and Florida’s own mismanagement are the issue.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week cited a report from the office of Gov. Nathan Deal that claims metro Atlanta is actually withdrawing 10 percent less water over the last decade even though the city’s population has grown by more than one million. The state also claims that conservation efforts have reduced per capita water use by approximately 30 percent in that same period.
If those numbers are independently verifiable, they are a powerful argument for Georgia’s case. Even so, it’s all but inconceivable that Lancaster’s recommendation would be the equivalent of an unlimited open tap for Atlanta.
This has played out in court as essentially an Atlanta vs. Apalachicola dispute. But of course, the stakeholders in this matter represent a lot more of the alphabet than that, including one major one that starts with C. The “tweener” interests, along both the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers, represent a large part of Georgia, as well as, in the case of the Chattahoochee, much of east Alabama. Southwest Georgia agriculture, to cite an obvious example, is heavily dependent on river water to support one of the most economically depressed regions of the country.
From their (our) standpoint, water flowing downstream from Atlanta only to be guaranteed minimum flow quantities in Florida would serve nobody’s interests in between.
Lancaster told attorneys to prepare final briefs within the next month — the rest of the Old Year — before he finishes his report, at which time the states’ lawyers can respond. After that, it goes to the Honorables in Washington.
So the trial proper is over. The chance to avert having it decided by nine people in Washington on the recommendation of one in Maine is not. Yet.
This story was originally published December 3, 2016 at 3:04 PM with the headline "Water trial ends, but ‘jury’ is still out."