Supreme Court to Review Florida vs. Georgia Water DisputeMudDucker wrote:You do know that it is the Feds that control water release right?
Yet another war is being waged between upstream folks vs. downstream folks, this time in Florida and Georgia over water usage related to the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin, which runs between the two states. The battle began some two decades ago, but it was just two years ago that the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) gave Florida permission to formally sue its neighbor to the north.
The gist of Florida’s complaint against Georgia, according to an article on the SCOTUS website, is that the Peach State is guilty of “unchecked usage” of the waters of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin and the Sunshine State is asking the court to “equitably apportion” said waters. It’s a complicated dispute involving inflows, tributaries and hydrologically connected groundwater.
Florida contends that these waters nourish “a rare and exemplary ecosystem” and have helped grow the Apalachicola Region’s “unique and vibrant cultural, social and economic community, dependent primarily on the environmental health of the River and Bay.”
Florida also points the finger at Georgia for disrupting and causing the decline of their fisheries, specifically the oyster beds, due to “Georgia’s upstream storage and consumption of water from the Chattahoochee and Flint River Basins.” According to Florida’s complaint, “the federal government recently recognized the collapse and issued a fishery disaster declaration for the oyster industry in Florida.”
http://growinggeorgia.com/features/2016 ... r-dispute/
