Over the weekend, the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper published what had been a confidential memo, which outlines Georgia’s legal strategy for its potential water fight with Tennessee.
Georgia lawmakers recently passed a resolution calling for the re-survey of its boundary to reach the 35th parallel of latitude and access the Tennessee River near Chattanooga.
The memo, written by Atlanta utilities lawyer Brad Carver and an unnamed water expert at the University of Mississippi, is titled “Tapping the Tennessee River.” It shows that Georgia has spent some effort laying the groundwork for a serious legal challenge.
The memo quotes a 2004 study from the Tennessee Valley Authority claiming that other states could pump about one (B)billion gallons a day out of the river without affecting TVA’s reservoir levels.
According to the memo, Georgia has challenged the border at least eight times, but generations of Tennessee legislators and executive officials haven’t taken those challenges seriously.
As for laughing off the idea that the 35th parallel is the true border, the memo refers to the 1890 case when Tennessee forced Mississippi to move its state-line four miles south – down to the 35th parallel.
Officials with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation say they haven’t seen the memo and couldn’t comment.
WEB EXTRA
State Representative Henry Fincher of Cookeville says it shouldn’t be hard to defend Tennessee’s right to the river.
“Since we’re east of the Mississippi, basic water rights are the classic English water rights, the riparian water rights, and what that means is, if you live next to the stream you can use it.”
Fincher’s argument is countered by the Georgia memo, which says Georgia specifically retained riparian rights when the western part of the state was ceded to the new territory of Mississippi.
For the most part, Tennessee legislators have laughed off the issue, saying the border hasn’t been contested since 1818. But the issue has sharpened dramatically into a potentially serious legal challenge under which Georgia would claim a historic right to riparian rights to the river. Georgia never accepted the 1818 survey that moved the border south.
The political reporters for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put up a backgrounder on the “confidential memo” Saturday, 23 Feb., at this blog.
The memo has, as the bloggers say, spectacular maps and some twenty-one other links to previous documents – many of them legal precedents.
Today, state Deputy Environment Commissioner Paul Sloan was unaware of it.
WPLN: Have you seen the eighteen page ah …. Thing on ..
Sloan: I have not… I’d love to take a look at it
WPLN: Your people haven’t given it to you? It’s been out since Friday….
Sloan: I haven’t seen it.
WPLN: You don’t know … who’s in charge of this in your department?
Sloan: I’ll take a look at this.
Sloan was at a conference on sharing watersheds with another state, Kentucky.
In the far west, highly detailed water resource plans are used by states debating where water should flow. But Tennessee’s equivalent plans are eight years old, according to a spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Environment.
Meg Lockhart, a spokesperson for the state Department of Conservation, said the state dropped the contract several years ago “due to lack of funding.” She said the department is negotiating to re-establish the contract.
Water usage in the Tennessee River watershed would be affected by the proposed border dispute between Georgia and Tennessee – if the water were pumped out of the Tennessee River and go to Atlanta, the cleaned-up return flow would go into another watershed. See the 2000 report.
Another question is how public water supply systems account for their water consumption. In the year 200, more than 500 such systems pumped out about 890 million gallons a day.
See the report.
For those with an insatiable curiosity about drought conditions and other observable data for Tennessee, see this link from the U.S. Geological Survey – they’ve even got a “drought watch”.
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