ALBANY, Georgia — Attendees at a rivers conference say they are cooperating over water use now that litigation among Alabama, Florida and Georgia has ended.
And many of those attendees said the cooperation never stopped — but it was given a boost in the absence of lawsuits.
“I happen to believe that [cooperation] is at least part of the reason we are no longer in litigation,” Mark Masters of Albany State University said in an interview. “There’s lots of good work that has gone on in Georgia, and Florida and Alabama.”
Masters is executive director of the university’s Georgia Water Planning and Policy Center, which hosted the third annual water conference for the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint rivers.
The event brought together more than 150 representatives of government agencies, water utilities, environmental groups, universities and economic-development organizations.
Some conference attendees said a federal proposal to resume dredging on the Apalachicola River in Florida, aimed at encouraging shipping and industry, has sparked new concerns.
Masters told the conference that the region is leading the country in its understanding and management of water resources.
“That doesn’t mean all the problems are going to be solved,” he said. “We are going to have challenges…. We’re still in a really bad drought.”
Florida’s lawsuit against Georgia over its water use by cities and farmers was dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021.
Alabama earlier this year struck a deal with Georgia to settle its lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over a proposal that gave more water from the Chattahoochee River to Atlanta and other cities.
Environmental groups in Florida still are suing in federal court over the proposal. They lost in a lower court, but their case still is pending before a federal appeals court.
Gordon Rogers of the Flint Riverkeeper group said he hopes the current situation, which he calls a “relaxation” of litigation, continues.
“There were a whole bunch of folks … who were working on remedies even during the litigation,” he said. “Then when the litigation was over — boom! — the oxygen is in the room and we can start doing stuff.”
Chris Manganiello, water policy director with the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper environmental group, said the litigation forced Georgia to take steps to conserve water, which benefited Florida. But he said the cooperation now is taking another turn.
“I think the conversation about the dredging EIS is going to succeed in stirring up [feelings] that haven’t been present for a little while,” he said. “We have moved on to a new conversation.”
Philip W. Clayton, executive director of the TriRivers Waterway Development Association in Alabama, told the conference that dredging and more shipping will help address high unemployment in Southwest Georgia and Southeast Alabama.
“There is cooperation,” Clayton said in an interview during a conference break. “Whether we all agree on everything or not is a different question.
“I would say the answer to that is no,” he continued. “We at least communicate and cooperate.”
Clayton said creating conditions for navigation in the Apalachicola River shouldn’t require more water flowing downstream from Lake Lanier, the huge federal reservoir on the Chattahoochee River north of Atlanta. But representatives of the Atlanta Regional Commission and Friends of Lake Lanier challenged assumptions about the downstream effects and benefits of the project during a conference panel discussion.
Danny Johnson, the managing director of the ARC’s natural resources department, said the current framework for managing the basin reflects decades of sometimes contentious discussions among the states and the stakeholders.
“That progress is significant, but it is also delicate,” Johnson told the conference. “We think it is important to ask about the process and criteria to be used, not to just identify impacts but to determine if it is worth upsetting this delicate balance in the ACF to pursue this project.”