Victory in ‘water war’ – but for whom?
Last week’s overwhelming passage of S. 612, known as the WIIN (Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation) Act, was undoubtedly a big win for Georgia in important ways.
Just how much and which parts of Georgia were the real winners, and whether there are other parts (like ours) that could ultimately be losers, are questions that probably won’t be answered soon.
The bill, which President Obama was expected to sign, includes federal money for a study of widening a navigational channel at the Port of Brunswick. And, as mentioned in an earlier editorial, it also commits Uncle Sam to 75 percent of the cost of deepening the Port of Savannah. Clearly the whole state benefits from both measures.
It also tips the balance in the long-running interstate water dispute heavily in Georgia’s favor. That’s where, as we all know, it gets more complicated.
As reported in the Forsyth News, some of the language in the bill was written by Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga., who represents a big part of the Lake Lanier area. Woodall’s language reverses a part of the 2014 Water Resources Reform and Development Act that made Washington the arbiter of unresolved and apparently unresolvable interstate water disputes. That act, Woodall told the Forsyth paper, had put “the heavy hand of the federal government on the scales of a state water issue — an incredibly dangerous precedent for all states.”
Woodall might well be right on the larger principle, but it’s not just semantic nitpicking to point out that a “state” issue and an interstate issue are two entirely different things.
The congressman also told the paper that “This is not just a Florida-Georgia-Alabama issue. It’s for anyone who is worried about keeping local control.” Again, the principle is sound, but the specifics are more complicated. “Local control,” when it comes to water that flows across state lines, isn’t really comparable to deciding whether there should be an elected or an appointed state school board.
If water is indeed strictly a state issue, then the advantage is always going to be upstream regardless of need or history or economy or just about any other consideration.
(It will never happen, but it would really be interesting if, say, Minnesota decided it needed exponentially more “local control” over a quaint American waterway that begins within its boundaries at Lake Itasca. Surely the folks in St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans would be just fine with that.)
The issue of state vs. federal control is still a hybrid, even with passage of the bill. As reported in the News, the WIIN Act “preserves the existing role of the Army Corps of Engineers in managing water levels in Lake Lanier by way of the Master Water Control Manual, among a host of other national initiatives.”
“Army Corps” and “national” are not words that connote strictly state matters. And, as noted on the WaterWorld web journal, the legislation “reauthorizes the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, Lake Tahoe Restoration Act, the Delaware River Basin Conservation Program, and Columbia River Basin Restoration Initiative,” not one of which is limited to a single state.
In its disputes with Alabama and Florida, Georgia has made a compelling case for its responsible use of, and return of water to, the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint and Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa river basins. Gov. Nathan Deal has noted that metro Atlanta is actually consuming less water over the last decade despite growing by more than a million people.
Especially in light of those efforts, Florida’s effort to have Georgia’s water withdrawal from the Chattahoochee cut back to 1992 levels isn’t just unrealistic — it’s ridiculous.
Rep. Woodall said it’s not the proper role of the federal government to pick winners and losers in interstate disputes, and he might be right. If so, the question to be answered is whether it just did.
This story was originally published December 17, 2016 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Victory in ‘water war’ – but for whom?."