For roughly a quarter century, Alabama, Florida and Georgia have been locked in a legal and political fight over the water flowing down the Chattahoochee River — a dispute with direct consequences for southwest Alabama’s drinking water, agriculture, fisheries and industry.
The conflict traces to 1990 and to the explosive growth of metropolitan Atlanta, whose rising water demands have strained the Chattahoochee-Flint-Apalachicola River Basin, which forms part of the Alabama-Georgia border before draining toward the Gulf. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the dams along the river, determines how much water continues downstream.
What’s at stake downstream
The effects are felt most sharply far from Atlanta. The Apalachicola oyster, once shipped to restaurants across the country, is now found mainly in the region itself as the bay’s oyster industry has struggled with reduced freshwater flows. In Washington, the fight has produced an unusual alliance between Alabama’s and Florida’s congressional delegations against Georgia’s.
Sen. Richard Shelby won insertion of a clause into a Senate energy and water appropriations bill that would bar the Corps from changing water allocation in the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa basin while the states negotiate. But Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia succeeded in stripping that language from the House version, the measure likely headed to President Barack Obama’s desk.
“Because the short-term [continuing resolution] is simply a stop-gap continuation of Fiscal Year 2015 spending policy, Senator Shelby did not request, nor was he expecting, the ‘water wars’ language from the Fiscal Year 2016 Energy and Water Appropriations bill to be included,” a Shelby spokeswoman said, adding that the senator “will continue to fight to ensure that the committee-approved language is incorporated in any final appropriations measure.”
A new Corps proposal pleases no one
The latest chapter arrived when the Corps released a draft proposal for regulating Chattahoochee flows, now in a 90-day public comment period. Georgia argues the flows fall short of its water needs; Alabama says the plan still tilts toward Georgia; and Florida contends it does little to restore Apalachicola Bay and its ailing oyster industry.
“The Corps’ draft proposal is just another step by federal bureaucrats to tip the balance of the ‘water wars’ in Georgia’s favor,” Shelby’s office said. “Sen. Shelby will continue to fight to ensure the governors of Alabama, Georgia and Florida — not bureaucrats in Atlanta — are empowered to work out an agreement.”
The precedent matters well beyond the Chattahoochee. Mobile exists because of Mobile Bay, and its fragile ecosystems depend on steady flows; a comparable upstream dispute on the Tombigbee River could one day pose similar questions for the Port City. For now, the three governors remain deadlocked, and the eventual resolution appears destined for the Supreme Court.