Georgia and Alabama are proposing a settlement to a long-running dispute over water flows in the Chattahoochee River, although the deal won’t address objections from groups in Florida over how much water ultimately flows into the environmentally sensitive Apalachicola River.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, both Republicans, said Tuesday that they will ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to approve a plan that would guarantee minimum water flows at Columbus, Georgia and in southeast Alabama. They also want the Corps of Engineers to affirm the current minimum level on Lake Seminole, which releases water from the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers into Florida’s Apalachicola River.
The deal could end Alabama’s lawsuit against the Corps of Engineers for changes it made in 2017 in how it operates dams on the Chattahoochee, including at Lake Lanier northeast of Atlanta. That lake and the portion of the Chattahoochee just downstream is the main water supply for much of metro Atlanta.
CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVER IN GEORGIA REOPENS TO THE PUBLIC AFTER E. COLI CONTAMINATION INCIDENT
Ultimately, fear that Atlanta’s ever-growing population would suck up all the upstream water and leave little for uses downstream has driven almost 25 years of litigation over water use in both the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint system, and the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa system, which flows out of Georgia to drain much of Alabama.
The litigation over the Chattahoochee has also played out against environmental troubles in the Apalachicola floodplain downstream of Lake Seminole and the collapse of the once-prolific oyster fishery in Apalachicola Bay.
The deal would guarantee a minimum water flow at Columbus for the first time, which would provide water for users in Columbus and Phenix City, Alabama, including a paper mill in Columbus. The minimum flow there would also indirectly benefit water levels at Walter F. George Lake in Eufaula, Alabama. The deal would also guarantee a minimum flow…
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