Perdue plots a water strategy

By Dan Chapman

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In the two weeks since a federal judge threatened to cut off metro Atlanta’s access to Lake Lanier, Gov. Sonny Perdue’s public response has covered the waterfront: appeal the judge’s ruling; get Congress to end the impasse; and resume negotiations with Alabama and Florida.

“We feel confident in an appellate strategy. We will continue to pursue a negotiated strategy,” Perdue told Atlanta Journal-Constitution editors and reporters Wednesday. “Let’s get out there and lay the facts on the table.”

But like any good card player, the governor isn’t showing his entire hand. Interviews with Perdue, business leaders, attorneys and others fighting the water war reveal a more ambitious, longer-term plan to ensure water flows across metro Atlanta for decades to come.

Perdue will push for more reservoirs, including some along smaller creeks, to capture spillover from storms. Quarries, particularly the dozens scattered around North Georgia, will also be considered for water storage.

Perdue mentioned twice recently that the state could “stick a straw in the river” — above or below Lanier and beyond federal jurisdiction — if access to the lake is restricted. He also said tapping the Tennessee River, including some of its headwaters in northwest Georgia, is “a very legitimate issue.”

The governor added that so-called inter-basin transfers in Georgia — political dynamite that riles legislators representing Flint and Savannah River constituencies — should be “an appropriate discussion going forward.”

Some of these “contingency plans” won’t be broached for years. Yet their inclusion in current discussions shows how seriously the state’s political and business communities take the judge’s ruling, which even he described as “draconian.”

There’s also talk of dealing with both of Alabama’s water-hogging disputes with Georgia as one. In addition to Lanier, Alabama has also sued over water distributed from Lake Allatoona, another major metro Atlanta water source. Water warriors say dealing simultaneously with both lawsuits could mollify Alabama.

Perdue’s advisers have weighed the creation of a “water czar,” an impartial, nationally recognized politician who can broker deals with Georgia, Alabama and Florida. Names mentioned: former U.S. Sens. Sam Nunn, Trent Lott and Tom Daschle. Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin has already been approached about playing a water-solving role.

“Everybody involved in the tri-state issue is trying to figure out what’s the best strategy and how to implement it,” said Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, a conservation group. “There is no silver bullet that will resolve this situation.”

A blow to region

U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson ruled July 17 that metro Atlanta has been illegally tapping Lake Lanier for decades. Congress, Magnuson said, never authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages Lanier and the Buford Dam, to release water for people to drink. Hydropower, navigation and flood control were the intended purposes, he said.

The judge gave Georgia, Alabama and Florida three years to solve two decades worth of litigation. Congress must ultimately approve any deal.

Without a resolution, Magnuson decreed, Atlanta must revert to mid-1970s water withdrawal levels. Back then, Gwinnett County pulled an average of 13 million gallons daily from the Chattahoochee. Today, it averages about 88 million gallons a day from Lanier.

The ruling was a body blow to North Georgia and, if it stands, likely kills the region’s breakneck growth. Roughly 3.5 million people depend upon Lanier for drinking water.

At a July 21 press conference at the Capitol, Perdue vowed a “fight to the death” to keep open Lanier’s spigots. He said the state would beseech the U.S. Court of Appeals and, perhaps, the U.S. Supreme Court, to overturn the decision.

A raft of attorneys representing Georgia, the Atlanta Regional Commission and Gwinnett County pounced upon Magnuson’s failure to allow a so-called “remedies phase” as grounds for appeal. Georgia expected the judge to allow its attorneys a chance to present arguments — that Alabama and Florida haven’t been harmed by Atlanta’s water intake from Lanier — before he entered an injunction.

They also maintain that Magnuson based his ruling solely on federal and congressional documents that appeared after Lanier was authorized for construction. Several sources cited last week a 1946 report to Congress by the Corps’ top engineer, who said the Buford Dam would “assure an adequate supply of water for municipal and industrial purposes in the Atlanta metropolitan area.”

But the preponderance of congressional and federal correspondence over the years supports Magnuson’s decision, said Gil Rogers, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

“The judge did a good job of really going through that history and making the call that, no, the reservoir was never officially authorized for water supply,” Rogers said.

Perdue, while publicly confident of an appeal’s chances, hedges his bets. In a conference call July 21 with Georgia’s congressional delegation, the governor sought legislation requiring that the Corps add drinking water to the list of Lanier’s “intended” purposes.

Perdue suggested that Georgia’s congressmen line up support from colleagues in 17 other states where 48 federally managed reservoirs also don’t specifically allow water to be used for drinking.

“My strategy is to really nationalize this issue in a modern context of water supply and water usage,” the governor said last week in an interview with reporters and editors at the AJC. “This is not constitutional language. Maybe in the 1940s navigation might have been a better purpose than water supply. But I don’t believe that’s the case today.”

In his ruling Magnuson said it was “beyond comprehension” that the Corps’ operating manual for Buford Dam was more than 50 years old. He added that its water supply plans need updating.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said Wednesday that Georgia should abandon its legal and legislative forays and rejoin the tripartite talks. Members of Georgia’s delegation prefer that Perdue, Riley and Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida first resolve the water war before seeking congressional approval. Privately, some metro Atlanta business leaders have voiced frustration with Perdue’s approach, which they say could plow the same unfruitful ground. They did not want to be identified publicly because Perdue has asked state business and political leaders to present a united front on the water dispute.

South Georgia worries

The governor travels to Columbus and Albany this week to assuage fears that his Lake Lanier strategy would sacrifice downstream communities that also rely on the Chattahoochee.

“We’ve been just as careful to guard the irrigation rights of farmers in southwest Georgia as we have the drinking rights of the five to six million people in northwest Georgia,” Perdue said.

Communities that tap the Flint, Savannah, Oconee and Ocmulgee rivers have long feared that Atlanta’s rapacious growth would one day lead to water pipes pointed toward Peachtree Street.

Perdue said the wholesale transfer of water from one Georgia watershed to another isn’t atop his water-resource wish list. Yet.

“It’s not the first thing on the table,” he said. But “making it a forbidden fruit forever is contrary to the theory of government and the theory of communities meeting one another’s needs.”

Perdue has hinted repeatedly that rivers and reservoirs on both sides of Georgia’s border with Tennessee could ease water woes farther south. Georgia rivers that flow northward comprise 6 percent of the Tennessee River’s drainage basin near Chattanooga. And the Tennessee Valley Authority manages three dams on lakes Nottely, Chatuge and Blue Ridge in North Georgia.

Perdue, who hired lawyers last year to weigh suing Tennessee and the TVA for access to the abundant river, also supports transferring water one day from northwest Georgia to metro Atlanta.

But the Tennessee River flows into Alabama, and Perdue isn’t likely to start another war with two water-sharing agreements already in dispute.

Yet a resolution of the Lake Lanier fight, the governor said, could involve Lake Allatoona. In 1990, Alabama sued the Corps over Atlanta’s water withdrawals from both reservoirs. Perdue may try to resolve both lawsuits, and appease Alabama, by horse-trading water flows from Allatoona and Lanier.

“I’ve been willing to cut a deal all along,” he said.

Bob Keefe contributed to this report.