River Basin Fight Pits Atlanta Against Neighbors

[Are_grits_groceries]

ATLANTA — The residents of the economic engine of the South, as they like to call this comparatively gleaming and rapidly expanding state capital, have always suspected that they are the objects of resentment from their more rural neighbors.

Now they are certain of it.

A recent court defeat has left Atlanta howling that its enemies, including Alabama and Florida, are trying to choke off the city’s prosperity, if not out of sheer spite then at least the misguided notion that jobs and money would flow to them instead. The conflict is the timeworn rural-versus-urban enmity writ large, a battle over water that has pitted Atlanta against its neighbors in and out of Georgia.

“The only motivation is political,” Charles Krautler, the director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, said of the fight. “We don’t have as good of spin doctors as they do. It’s easy to point the finger at big bad Atlanta.”

Ostensibly, the war among the three states is about a river basin that supplies the taps of 3.5 million people in metropolitan Atlanta before it flows down the Alabama-Georgia state line and into the Florida Panhandle. Each state says the others are demanding too much water. But many experts say there is no actual scarcity — the system, managed properly, could meet the needs of users along the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers, including power companies, farmers and oystermen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/us/16water.html?_r=1&hp

Now you're gonna see a fight. This will happen all over the US in years to come.

[WCGreen]

1. Suddenly Cleveland will be the place to be.....

That lake in our front yard won't look so Erie any more...

[Kerrytravelers]

2. The next wars will likely be over water.

And since we're doing little to deal with the problem now, just wait... things will get ugly. Ugly.

[Are_grits_groceries]

4. I have been saving articles for years

about problems in a lot of areas. Water wars will make oil problems look tame.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. It's already happening in SoCal...

The Colorado River is way oversubscribed, and LA is losing.

Too many thirsty folks here, and the farmers are getting water at very low rates; plus they are raising water-thirsty crops such as rice and cotton.

It will get ugly.

[3waygeek]

5. I've lived in Gwinnett county NE of Atlanta

for 16 years -- we get 100% of our water from Lake Lanier, so if an agreement isn't reached, we're screwed.