The most frustrating thing about a drought like this one is the waiting.

You know it has to end ... someday. You know the rain will come back ... someday. You just don't know when someday is going to come.

So you wait, because there's not much you can do to hurry a drought along.

Lawsuits can be like that too. The states of Florida, Georgia and Alabama, along with the Army Corps of Engineers, are embroiled in a tangle of lawsuits over the water resources shared among the states. Someday, a final resolution of those suits could clear the way for sane management of Lake Lanier and the Chattahoochee River and wipe away uncertainties concerning Atlanta's future water supplies.

Someday, but not today or tomorrow, of course. Because once judges and lawyers get involved, there's not much to be done to hurry things along. You just have to ...

Wait.

But in this case, we do have other options. Our dispute with our neighboring states is a human problem, not a meteorological phenomenon. And as a human problem, it has a human solution. We just have to find it.

But so far, I don't see that happening. Negotiations have failed, mediation has failed, and leaders in Congress and at the state level appear to have resigned themselves to muddling through this mess, leaving our situation unsettled for who knows how long.

Nobody seems to have a vision of where we want to be in another three years, along with a clear plan for getting there. The only proposal on the table at the moment is that loopy idea of the Georgia Legislature to slice us off a piece of water-rich Tennessee. At a time when Georgia is trying to cast itself as a voice of reason and compromise in the water wars, that's more than a little off message.

In Florida, however, Democrats U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson at least have the germ of an idea. They have introduced legislation in Congress calling for a $1.2 million study of the Appalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system by the National Research Council. Florida officials apparently believe such a study would validate their claims that the water consumption of metro Atlanta is doing serious damage to downstream users.

However, at least some metro Atlanta officials also like the idea of an NRC study, because they believe it would validate their own claim that Florida's problems are being caused by the drought, not by growth in metro Atlanta or excessive water consumption.

"We have always asserted that there is ample water available to meet the needs of all of the basin users if we base decisions on facts rather than political posturing," says Chick Krautler, director of the Atlanta Regional Commission. "... A balanced inquiry that develops a comprehensive, shared fact base amongst all stakeholders is the first step toward decisions we all can live with."

This all sounds intriguing: We have two parties that are very far apart in their understandings of the issues dividing them, with each side so confident in the virtue of its position that it is eager to have an outside body of experts come along to validate its opinion.

Sounds like we have a deal. As Krautler says, that may indeed be a "first step toward decisions we all can live with."

In their legislation, Nelson and Boyd ask the National Research Council to "conduct a comprehensive study of the water management, needs and conservation" of the ACF basin, requesting that it report its findings within two years.

Georgia's congressional delegation ought to sign onto that bill as co-sponsors and get it passed into law as quickly as possible. In two years —- we hope —- the current drought will have ended, easing some of the heightened passions now blocking honest discussion. By then, an objective, conclusive scientific report could also give politicians in Georgia, Alabama and Florida the cover they might think they need to make compromises.

Let's stop waiting and do something.

> Jay Bookman is deputy editorial page editor. His column runs Monday and Thursday.

jbookman@ajc.com