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Georgia Loses Water Ruling02-11-08 | News

Georgia Loses Water Ruling

Although the ruling raises questions about Georgia's rights to the water it already is using in Lake Lanier, Bert Brantley, a spokesman for Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, said it would not harm the state's negotiating position in the water-sharing talks.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out an agreement that Georgia reached with the Army Corps of Engineers for water rights to a major federal reservoir outside Atlanta, handing Alabama and Florida a major victory in the states’ long-standing water wars.

The ruling comes amid tense negotiations among the states’ governors over water sharing during a record drought.

The 2003 agreement with the Corps would give Georgia about a quarter of Lake Lanier’s capacity over the coming decades and is the foundation of Georgia’s long-term plans for supplying drinking water to the rapidly growing Atlanta region.

Alabama and Florida challenged the pact, arguing that Georgia doesn’t have any legal right to the federal reservoir, which was initially built for hydropower. The withdrawals would dry up river flows into their states that support smaller municipalities, power plants, commercial fisheries and industrial users like paper mills.

A district court earlier ruled in Georgia’s favor, but the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington overturned that decision Tuesday, saying that the agreement constituted a major operational change at the reservoir that requires congressional approval.