Georgia-Tennessee border stone AWOL

By Associated Press

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A controversial 200-year-old survey marker detailing the border between two states — and water rights to the Tennessee River — is missing.

The Camak Stone, a slightly off-the-mark surveyor’s stone at the confluence of the Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama borders, isn’t where it is supposed to be.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that a volunteer for nearby State Line Cemetery, Freddie McCulley, noticed the stone was gone after discovering some vandalism at the cemetery.

A surveyor placed the Camak Stone in 1826 at what he thought was the 35th parallel marking the border between Tennessee and Georgia. The marker has become a source of controversy between the two states in a battle for water rights in the Tennessee River.

A few trees and bushes near the usual location of the stone have red-orange surveyor tapes tied to them.

Coosa-North Georgia Water Planning Council Chairman John Bennett said he knew of no survey work ordered at the state line near Nickajack Cave.

“Our charge is to come up with a plan for supplying infrastructure and water sources,” Bennett said.

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said state officials had nothing to do with the stone’s disappearance.

“There’s been no directive by the governor’s office to do anything like that [a new survey],” he said. “You don’t need a survey to know the line is in the wrong place.”

Bart Crattie, a board member of the Surveyors Historical Society who helped make the Camak Stone a household name a few years ago, said the marker likely has been the victim of a relic hunter.

“I’ll bet you it’s on eBay,” he said. “There’s a huge market for surveying relics.”

Crattie wrote an article in 2008 for American Surveyor saying a flawed survey in the early 1800s put the border in the wrong place and cut Georgia out of a share of the Tennessee River.

Had the line been designated correctly, it would fall about in the middle of the main river channel near Nickajack Cave, Crattie said.

Crattie’s efforts spawned legislative and gubernatorial rhetoric back and forth across the Tennessee and Georgia state lines. Georgia lawmakers empowered the governor to negotiate with Tennessee to correct the state line. Tennessee officials said no way.

A federal judge’s ruling last month in Georgia’s water battle with Alabama and Florida renewed the state’s efforts to deal with Tennessee. The judge ruled that Georgia’s use of Lake Lanier, which provides water for about
3 million metro Atlanta residents, must cease in three years.

After that ruling, Georgia state Sen. Judson Hill (R-Marietta) suggested lawmakers again explore agreements to get Tennessee River water or move the border north.

Tennessee state Sen. Andy Berke (D-Chattanooga) said on Friday that Georgia officials are fishing in the wrong waters.

“It’s hard to imagine what new is going to happen [to change anything about the state line],” he said. “They have a serious problem, and they’re not going to fix it by talking about border disputes. They need to be talking about land use and water conservation.”