Clock ticks again on water use pact

Once again, for the umpteenth time (most of us who are old enough have lost count by now), a court deadline has been imposed, at least tentatively, for warring sides to reach an interstate pact over allocation of water in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system.

The sides in this case are Georgia and Florida. (Alabama, for whatever reasons, is sitting this one out. We’d be tempted to say it’s because the top officials in all three branches of Alabama government have their own legal problems, if this suit didn’t predate most of those.)

Florida has charged Georgia with overuse of water, one of the results being damage to the oyster industry in Apalachicola Bay; Georgia counters that Florida’s woes are of its own making, or of nature’s, and have nothing to do with upriver consumption.

The matter would eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court if the two states can’t reach an agreement. In an attempt to avoid that least desirable of outcomes, the court in November of 2014 appointed Maine attorney Ralph I. Lancaster as a kind of “special master” to oversee the case. Over the nearly two years since, Lancaster has alternately urged and scolded the two states to play nice, and is quoted in court records as having said, “If you are able to reach a deal, let me add that I will be available 24/7 to take your call, telling me that this matter is settled.”

Now, as reported in the Gainesville Times, there’s a renewed urgency to that negotiation: The court is considering October or November for bringing the case to trial.

Both states say they’re still talking. According to court briefs filed Friday and quoted in the Times, “Florida is committed to the mediation process and hopes that the mediator will be able to help the parties identify solutions to break through the decades of deadlock,” while Georgia concurs that “the parties continue to evaluate and discuss potential ways to resolve the case.”

All that’s pretty vague, of course, but until and unless some specific water sharing agreements are signed, sealed and stamped, it probably needs to be.

Meanwhile, Lancaster reportedly has enough legal authority on behalf of the high court to help the process along before it has to end up in Washington: “It’s my understanding that [Lancaster] was appointed with the ability to take evidence,” Lake Lanier Association attorney Clyde Morris told the Times, “which means he could preside over evidence being presented in the form of testimony.”

The one thing all parties to this decades-long river debate generally agree on is that having issues decided in courtrooms, by people well versed in law but at best only superficially familiar with water quantity, quality, needs and uses in the ACF basin, ultimately resolves little or nothing.

Georgia and Florida negotiators now have four or five months to make progress on the basis of realities they know and understand, and the Honorables of the high bench don’t and can’t. It’s time they would be irresponsible to squander.

This story was originally published June 8, 2016 at 3:25 PM with the headline "Clock ticks again on water use pact."