The Problem is Partisan Politics…Oh, Wait

The Associated Press reports Feds say Southern water-sharing talks failed

WASHINGTON – Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne acknowledged Saturday that White House-brokered water negotiations among Alabama, Florida and Georgia have failed.

Without an agreement, the Army Corps of Engineers and other federal agencies will begin implementing a water-sharing plan of their own, Kempthorne said in a letter to the governors.

“Regrettably, it will necessarily be a solution being directed to the states instead of our much hoped for solution coming from the states,” he wrote in the letter, released Saturday.
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The three states have been feuding for nearly two decades over water rights in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint and the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa river basins, which run south through Georgia into Alabama and the Florida panhandle.

Georgia is fighting to hold back more water in federal reservoirs around Atlanta to serve its growing population.

Florida and Alabama argue that Georgia hasn’t adequately planned for growth. The extra withdrawals, they argue, would damage the environment and dry up river flows into their states that support smaller municipalities, power plants, commercial fisheries and industrial users like paper mills.

This involves three Republican states and a Republican mediator, and has been going on forever, because none of them wants to make any tough choices. None of these states has done anything to limit growth in areas where the infrastructure is inadequate, and all have cut taxes to the point that they can’t afford to pay for what’s needed.

You can’t go out and attract businesses that require a lot of water for their factories if you don’t have the water available, but all of them have done it. There is a point at which reality will bite you very hard and it’s here. Georgia isn’t the only state suffering from the drought, but unregulated growth around Atlanta has made a bad problem, worse.