It took years. Luckily, it didn’t cost thousands of lives.
Georgia has emerged victorious in a ruling by the US Supreme Court’s Special Master in the decade-plus long water wars over the water flowing from Lake Lanier to Florida. Greg Bluestein of the AJC has those details:
A special master appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court decided said Florida failed to prove that new limits on Georgia’s water consumption were needed after five weeks of hearing testimony in the case.
“Florida has failed to show that a consumption cap will afford adequate relief,” wrote Ralph Lancaster Jr., the special master appointed to the case.
The U.S. Supreme Court must still accept Lancaster’s findings. There is also a remote possibility that Congress could weigh in, but that becomes a sticky matter for a lot of Western states that don’t care much for the potential of a new precedent.
Kudos go out to Governor Nathan Deal and his staff, former Governor Perdue and his staff, Attorney General Chris Carr and staff, and former Attorney General Sam Olens and staff. Quite a few attorneys worked on Georgia’s behalf, including Brad Carver, Nels Peterson, Jud Turner, Josh Belinfante, Harold Rehies, Carol Couch, Bruce Brown, and Todd Sillman among others.
There’s also the Georgia congressional delegation, many of whom stood united and took a budget vote they didn’t want to take in order to get a measure favorable to Alabama and Florida stripped from an omnibus bill. It was a team effort. And it looks like the Georgia team gets to keep our water. Onward and upward….to Tennessee.