The Georgia state legislature this week reopened an old boundary dispute with Tennessee. Georgia State Senator David Shafer introduced a resolution claiming that the real boundary of his state is about a mile north of the official border.
Shafer claims the real border is the 35th parallel – the 35th degree of north latitude – which would extend the north border of Georgia to the south bank of the Tennessee River. Georgia has eyed the millions of gallons flowing in the Tennessee River as a possible pool of water to serve booming Atlanta.
Most Tennessee legislators laughed it off the resolution, but State Representative Henry Fincher says the issue is rising in importance.
“The mere fact that the Georgia legislature would try this land grab, if you will, to get to Tennessee’s water supply, shows how critical and important a proper, thoughtful approach to making sure how all Tennesseans have adequate access to water [is].”
Fincher is co-sponsoring a bill to authorize a water use study in Tennessee. Resource managers in Western states use such studies to argue for a bigger share of limited water supplies.
Meanwhile other representatives withdrew a bill today which would have simply outlawed the sale of “state water” outside the borders of Tennessee.
WEB EXTRA
The bill for a water utilization study is HB 2669 McDonald, Odom, and others/SB 3044 Kyle. It is scheduled to be heard by the House Conservation Committee on Feb. 13.
The bill that would forbid the sale of water out-of-state is (was) HB 2838 Borchert/SB 3010 Herron. Although withdrawn from the House, the Senate bill is listed as referred to the Senate Environment, Conservation & Tourism Committee.
The Georgia resolution is SR 822 in that state’s database
Latitude North 35 is a fine line running about parallel to and about one-sixteenth of an inch above the recognized state line on the standard-sized road maps you’d find in the navigator side of a car driving through Chattanooga. The proposal by Georgia would change the line from the corner where Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee come together (on the western side of Georgia) to the place the Chattooga River crosses the state line between North Carolina and Georgia. At the corner, South Carolina butts up against Georgia to the east.
Georgia Senator David Shafer (R-Duluth) asked for joint boundary commissions with the states of North Carolina and of Tennessee, claiming that the current line was wrongly surveyed in 1818. Shafer said:
“The 35th Parallel was the boundary between Georgia and North Carolina when those two states joined the eleven others to create the United States of America, and it became boundary between Georgia and Tennessee when that state was created from the territory of North Carolina. It remains the boundary today…. [because of] a flawed survey conducted in 1818 and never accepted by the State of Georgia.”
The Georgia legislator argued:
“A state boundary can only be changed by the legislatures of the states, with the consent of Congress. It cannot be changed by a mathematician with a faulty compass or a skittish surveying party afraid of the Indians.”
Shafer is a legislator who has filed numerous bills dealing with the current water shortage in Georgia.
The Georgia-Tennessee Boundary Line Commission and the North Carolina-Tennessee commission would be made up of six legislators appointed by the Georgia lieutenant governor and the speaker of the Georgia House.
The law books of Georgia and of Tennessee view the boundary differently. From Georgia state Law, Title 50, Chapter 2, part 3:
§ 50-2-3. Boundary between Georgia and North Carolina and Tennessee
The boundary between Georgia and North Carolina and Georgia and Tennessee shall be the line described as the thirty-fifth parallel of north latitude, from the point of its intersection by the River Chattooga, west to the place called Nickajack.
Tennessee Code Annotated is more specific, citing the very line that Georgia says is flawed:
TCA 4-2-105. Georgia boundary
The boundary line between this state and the state of Georgia begins at a point in the true parallel of the thirty-fifth degree of north latitude, as found by James Carmack, mathematician on the part of the state of Georgia, and James S. Gaines, mathematician on the part of this state, on a rock about two feet (2?) high, four inches (4?) thick, and fifteen inches (15?) broad, engraved on the north side thus: “June 1st, 1818, Var. 6¾ East,” and on the south side thus: “Geo. 35 North, J. Carmack,” which rock stands one (1) mile and twenty-eight (28) poles from the south bank of the Tennessee River, due south from near the center of the old Indian town of Nick-a-Jack, and near the top of the Nick-a-Jack Mountain at the supposed corner of the states of Georgia and Alabama; thence running due east, leaving old D. Ross two (2) miles and eighteen (18) yards in this state, and leaving the house of John Ross about two hundred (200) yards in the state of Georgia, and the house of David McNair one (1) mile and one fourth (¼) of a mile in this state, with blazed and mile-marked trees, lessening the variation of the compass by degrees, closing it at the termination of the line on the top of the Unicoi Mountain at five and one half degrees (5½°).
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