Water news is seldom unpolluted

Earlier this week, filings from both Georgia and Florida attorneys in ongoing U.S. Supreme Court litigation between the two states over the waters of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river basin suggested the possibility of progress. The two states, opposing each other in the nation’s highest federal court, are also involved in intense discussions reportedly involving a prominent, high-profile mediator neither side will identify.

But as we’ve come to learn over the last three decades, optimism about water sharing must always be tempered with caution.

Even as the two states were talking (at each other in court, and with each other elsewhere), the environmental watchdog group American Rivers released its annual endangered rivers report. Topping the list this year: You guessed it.

The ACF system, American Rivers reported, is at a “breaking point” because of outdated water management models and withdrawal practices.

"American Rivers is calling on the governors of Alabama, Florida and Georgia,” the report noted, “to swiftly act to form a water-sharing agreement."

The three states started discussing and debating water allocation so long ago that American Rivers might be a bit behind the curve on that point — so much so that the “swiftly” part of its recommendation is by now moot.

But its basic point is anything but. Regardless of the years that have elapsed since this issue arose, time is still critical, perhaps now more than ever. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is updating river management manuals that have been unrevised for 60 years, while Georgia and Florida, as noted before, are trying to get their dispute resolved by people closer to the issue than nine (make that, for now, eight) presidential appointee lawyers in black robes.

It would behoove Alabama, it should go without saying, to get back into this conversation.

Justice defied

Who says the “affluenza” defense doesn’t work?

It’s doubtful the families of the four people killed in a 2013 drunk driving crash in Texas would say justice has been served for a young perpetrator whose defense was that he was too rich and spoiled to know right from wrong.

Ethan Couch has been in a max-security lockup for more than two months, because he and his mother fled to Mexico after a video appeared indicating Couch might have violated his probation.

Yes … probation.

The Couches were apprehended in the resort town of Puerto Vallarta and returned to Fort Worth, where he has been held since late January.

So after Couch failed to appear for a drug test at the behest of his probation officer, then was a no-show for a second meeting, then fled the country, a judge finally brought the gavel down on Couch, who just turned 19, in his first court appearance as an adult.

He was sentenced to four consecutive 180-day jail terms. Six months a life.

Maybe by then this privilege-oppressed young man will have suffered enough.

This story was originally published April 13, 2016 at 4:33 PM with the headline "Water news is seldom unpolluted."