Three-decade water dispute makes it to the Supreme Court at last. So ... now what?

The almost 30-year-old dispute involving the waters of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river basin finally made it to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.

Those who might have been expecting some definitive resolution at long last were kidding themselves.

After just a couple of days’ testimony before the justices, there are no answers, just more questions. They’re mostly the right questions, but they’re the same ones people in Georgia, Alabama and Florida have been asking (and trying to answer in their own interests) at least since the early 1990s.

There’s no need by now to go into detail. Florida claims Georgia uses up too much water — sprawling metro Atlanta from the Chattahoochee, agricultural central and south Georgia from the Flint — and sends too little of it on down to the Gulf, where Florida fisheries, particularly the Apalachicola Bay oyster industry, are hurting. (Alabama, the third major Chattahoochee stakeholder, has for whatever reasons sat this one out.)

A court-appointed special master, Ralph Lancaster of Maine, after hearing exhaustive and no doubt exhausting arguments from both states and from various specialists and experts, finally recommended that the high court side with Georgia. But that recommendation is not binding on the court, nor was it an unqualified endorsement of Georgia’s case.

As reported Tuesday by WABE, Atlanta’s National Public Radio affiliate, Lancaster has acknowledged that Florida’s water problem is serious, and that Georgia has not managed its water resources responsibly: “Georgia’s position — practically, politically, and legally — can be summarized as follows,” Lancaster wrote in a February 2017 report: “Georgia’s agricultural water use should be subject to no limitations, regardless of the long-term consequences for the Basin.”

Rather, Lancaster’s recommendation is based on the premise that capping Georgia’s water consumption wouldn’t necessarily alleviate Florida’s problem because water flows on ACF rivers are largely determined by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages several major dams — and which is not a party to the case one way or the other.

“The justices felt certainly that something bad was happening to Florida, but I didn’t get a sense of, ‘What are we going to do about it,’” University of Georgia law professor Peter Appel told WABE. “I could very well see them just kicking the can down the road.”

Justice Elena Kagan said common sense suggests that Florida would get more water if Georgia used less; Georgia attorney Craig Primis responded that there is “nothing common sense” about how the river system works (a conclusion anybody who has paid attention for the last 30 years would find hard to dispute).

Then there’s this twist, raised by Justice Department lawyer Edwin Kneedler, who questioned whether the Corps of Engineers’ authority to control river flows includes the authority to address issues of environmental/economic impact on waters not directly under Corps control — like Apalachicola Bay.

The proverbial “can” is now on the Supreme Court floor. Where it gets kicked next is anybody’s guess. Back down our way is a distinct possibility.

This story was originally published January 10, 2018 at 5:46 PM with the headline "Three-decade water dispute makes it to the Supreme Court at last. So ... now what?."