expected to last four to six weeks, the trial is expected to decide water management authority and water supply and use in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint watershed, a basin shared by Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.
The Chattahoochee River rises in northern Georgia and forms part of the border with Alabama. The Flint River joins the Chattahoochee just above the Florida border, some 40 miles west of Tallahassee. Together, the rivers form the Apalachicola, which flows across the Florida panhandle and empties into the Apalachicola Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.
Florida, at the end of the system, claims that Georgia’s water withdrawals, especially in metro Atlanta and by farmers in the Flint River Basin, have damaged the ecology of the Apalachicola Bay and its oyster industry by increasing the bay’s salinity. The state seeks to cap Georgia’s water withdrawals with stiffer restrictions during drought years. Georgia could meet this cap by implementing a range of urban and agricultural conservation measures, Florida claims. Alabama supports Florida’s position.
Georgia claims Florida’s proposal would cause a “massive economic injury” to the state that would not be balanced by the downstream benefits in Florida. Georgia submits that corn, cotton, peanuts and other crops in the watershed accounted for $4.5 billion in farm revenue in 2013; the ecological problems in the Apalachicola Bay are the result of dams, not water withdrawals; the lawsuit is missing a key party: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps operates five reservoirs in the basin, and without a corresponding change in its policies any water savings in Georgia will be trapped behind Corps reservoirs.