Dr. Kathleen Rugel, aquatic ecologist, WaterWonk, friend, nascent author (she is writing a book, Getting to Water) and Policy and Practice Fellow at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) recently penned this thoughtful post on the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Basin: Crossing Lines: Reaching Across the Table to Share Water. As many of you know, the ACF Basin has been a source of contention among the basin states of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. The latter two are currently before the U.S. Supreme Court - Florida is suing Georgia over the release of additional water to maintain the correct salinity in Apalachicola Bay, an important oyster fishery..
Here are the first few paragraphs of Kathleen's article, in which she talks about the run-up to the formation of the ACF Stakeholders.
Apparently it takes the village to make a water agreement. At least
that’s what I have found in my research on how people share water around the globe. It takes participation from all relevant users. If they’re not all included, there’s likely to be trouble down the line. To circumvent this, it is necessary for traditionally disparate sectors to sit down together, sometimes for the first time, and talk to one another.
Top-down directives for how water and other resources are shared are often less effectual. These mandates, mostly regulatory as opposed to participatory, can lead to resentment, rebellion and sometimes, litigation. Unfortunately, litigated decisions deliver narrow results which rarely satisfy the original needs and concerns of all stakeholders. They also do not address the changing requirements of watersheds as populations, usage and climate conditions evolve. Sadly, this often leads to more litigation. And around and around it goes, ad nauseam. This was the case for decades between Alabama, Florida and Georgia in the southeastern US regarding water usage in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin. At least at first.
At times, it wasn’t pretty. Water flowing within this tri-state watershed needed to be divided between a wide range of users, not limited to farmers, power companies, shrimping, oyster, and recreation industries. There was also the burgeoning population of Atlanta, the ever-expanding capital of Georgia, and most upstream and seemingly formidable water consumer in the ACF. After this sprawling
municipality began to require more water following severe droughts in the 1980s, users downstream started to feel slighted by what appeared to be dwindling water to supply their industries and usage. These sectors thought Atlanta should release more water from Lake Lanier, a reservoir located north of the city on the Chattahoochee River. The reservoir was originally built to provide flood control, navigation and power supply, not water, to the capital. Squabbles over doling out this water eventually came to a head in 1990 when Alabama sued the US Army Corps of Engineers to keep the Corps from allocating more water to Georgia. Then in 2000 Georgia sued the Corps for interfering in its water use. In the same year, southeastern power companies, who felt all of this was contributing to inflated power prices, sued the Corps for its decisions on the preceding litigations. Get the picture?
To get the rest of the picture, read the rest of her post here. It'll be worth your while.
Enjoy!
"We all speak one language and that is water" -- Elder Nancy Scanie, Cold Lake First Nation (Canada)
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