State's water debate now in Congress' hands

By Bob Keefe

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

WASHINGTON — Governors of Georgia, Alabama and Florida had 19 years to reach to an agreement over how to share the water from Lake Lanier.

Now a federal judge has given Congress three years to work out the dispute. But if getting three governors to agree on something as important and contentious as drinking water wasn’t hard enough, getting more than 500 politicians in Congress to reach an agreement could be exponentially harder.

“Now we’re going to have to deal not with just two other states — we’re literally going to have 50 states involved,” said Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia. “It’s going to be a real challenge.”

Georgia’s entire congressional delegation meets Tuesday to discuss what to do next, and it may map out a way to stay out of the disagreement — and instead pitch the issue back to the three governors who were unable to resolve it in the first place.

Several members of Congress, and not just from Georgia, say that approach makes sense.

“Congress should not intervene in this process until the three states have reached a negotiated settlement,” said U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

Chambliss said Friday he agrees, and similar statements came from the House.

“I hope that this ruling will be a call to action for the governors of Georgia, Florida and Alabama to restart their discussions on a tri-state water agreement,” said U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).

The governors of Florida and Alabama said they’re willing to return to negotiations, but Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue seemed to sound a different note.

“I will use this opportunity not only to appeal the judge’s decision but, most importantly, to urge Congress to address the realities of modern reservoir usage,” Perdue said. “The judge’s ruling allows a three-year window for either congressional action or an agreement by the states, and we will work diligently with Georgia’s delegation and members of Congress to re-establish the proper use of federal reservoirs throughout the country.”

In his ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson said it was illegal for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates Lake Lanier, to draw water from the lake to meet Atlanta’s needs. The Corps has been making such withdrawals for decades, and Lanier is now the chief source of drinking water for millions of people in metro Atlanta.

The court said Lanier was not intended to be Atlanta’s water supply, and the Corps may not use it that way unless Congress authorizes it to do so.

If Congress fails to pass a water-sharing bill in three years, Magnuson said he would order Atlanta’s withdrawals cut to 1970s levels, a measure that the judge acknowledged would be draconian.

The ruling is the latest step in a nearly 20-year saga that began with a lawsuit filed by Alabama in 1990 charging that the Corps of Engineers was illegally withdrawing water from Lanier — and punishing states downstream — to support Atlanta. The suit, later joined by Florida, has been placed on hold a number of times to give the states’ governors a chance to negotiate a deal.

Getting Congress involved in the dispute opens up a whole new can of worms. Representatives of Alaska or New Jersey, for instance, might ultimately have a vote in deciding how much water Atlanta gets from Lake Lanier.

And in keeping with the grand game of politics, to get the support of their peers, Georgia’s delegation might have to give up some political goodwill — and votes — on issues totally unrelated to the water dispute. Senators from another state might agree to vote in Georgia’s favor on a water bill, for example, but only if Georgia’s senators agree to vote with them on some new defense contract or transportation project for their state.

“One of the reasons that this has played itself out in the federal court system is because of the challenges that exist on the congressional level,” said Chip Lake, who is chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.).

“This is a tri-state water war. You have 47 other states that don’t want to get into the middle of this fight. But now they may have to,” Lake said.

In addition to brokering negotiations between the governors of the three states, members of Georgia’s congressional delegation are also likely to turn to colleagues involved in similar water wars elsewhere.

Among them are representatives from seven Western states that reached a historic pact in 2001 outlining the use of Colorado River water by Los Angeles, San Diego and other parts of sprawling Southern California that — like Atlanta — need more water than their rural neighbors.

“We will look to precedent and look to people who have already done this,” said U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). “In fact, they [Western states] may have a template for what we need to do in our area.”

That said, the Western states pact may also be a harbinger of the difficulties that lie ahead. That agreement took an arduous five years to reach, and the ill will over water still lingers today among the states involved.

“I never thought we would get here,” then-U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said at a January 2001 ceremony announcing the Western states agreement, according to press reports. “It seemed absolutely improbable, bordering on impossible.”