IBT proposal gets Alabama’s attention
In the latest round of what has long been labeled the “Tri-State Water War” — a label misleading in more ways than we’ll go into (again) here — Alabama has chosen to remain mostly on the sidelines. The case that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court is a bi-state dispute between Georgia and Florida over the waters of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river basin.
Maybe, as new developments could reveal, what Alabama was doing was not so much sitting on the sidelines as lying in the weeds.
More likely, a suggested “remedy” from the court-appointed special master in the case changes the whole equation from Alabama’s perspective. Maine attorney Ralph Lancaster, in ordering the two litigant states to make one final attempt at a water sharing agreement, suggested in the Jan. 3 order that they consider interbasin transfers (IBTs) to supplement water supplies during drought periods. So rather than Georgia and Florida fighting over the water, they might just bring some in from elsewhere. A win-win.
Except maybe for the folks “elsewhere.”
Now Alabama’s interested.
As long as Florida’s case hinged on limiting Georgia’s water consumption, then the interests of Alabama, whose eastern border from Lanett south to Lake Seminole is the Chattahoochee, were pretty much covered.
As reported in the Gainesville Times, Alabama attorney John C. Neiman Jr. acknowledged as much in a Wednesday letter to Lancaster, noting that Alabama “did not need to become a party to this case because Florida’s requested relief was limited to a cap on Georgia’s withdrawals from the ACF Basin, which would not prejudice Alabama.”
“Not prejudice” is an understatement; Florida has in essence been fighting Alabama’s battle as well as its own. Neiman’s letter also noted that neither Georgia nor Florida had suggested interbasin water transfers or asked the court to authorize them.
It’s still not (yet) Alabama’s issue, Neiman wrote, if Lancaster’s IBT suggestion “contemplates only importation of water from basins wholly within Georgia, such as the Oconee and Ocmulgee river basins.” (The former is a tributary of the latter; both originate in Georgia and flow to Georgia’s Atlantic coast.)
But if authorization for such transfers should involve other interstate waterways like the ACF — such as the Coosa, Tallapoosa, and/or Tennessee rivers, then “Alabama would, as a result, become a necessary party to further litigation in this case.”
The obvious irony in such a development, of course, is that an Alabama suit involving the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapooosa (ACT) or Tennessee systems, unlike the current suit, would involve no river that flows into Florida. Florida’s interest then would be in stopping Alabama from stopping Georgia and Florida from getting water from other rivers Alabama depends on. (Follow that?) A whole new alignment involving a whole different alliance.
It should never come to that. Interbasin transfers, even within state borders, are an environmentally, economically and politically problematic approach to water allocation … even when the Supreme Court isn’t involved.
This story was originally published January 16, 2017 at 3:10 PM with the headline "IBT proposal gets Alabama’s attention."