Lake Lanier Water Dispute: Court Won't Rehear Ruling

ATLANTA — Alabama's governor says the state will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to decide a dispute over Georgia's ability to use water from a reservoir that's the main source for roughly 3 million people in metro Atlanta.

Gov. Robert Bentley's decision came after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta rejected a request for a new hearing from Georgia's neighbors, Alabama and Florida. Those states had wanted the full appeals court to reconsider a three-judge panel's ruling Atlanta had a legal right to take water from Lake Lanier northeast of the city.

Lawyers first learned of the appeals court's decision Monday, three days after it was made.

Alabama and Florida have argued that Congress never gave Georgia permission to use the federal reservoir as a water source and that Atlanta's consumption harms communities and wildlife downstream on the Chattahoochee, Flint and Apalachicola rivers.

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Ray Henry can be reached at . http://www.twitter.com/rhenryAP

Comments

[YOKEL13]

09:09 PM on 09/19/2011

This is the kind of dispute that is easy to resolve. Just give the water rights to the richest guy, and he can sell water to the highest bidders.

[Arthur Walsh]

06:03 PM on 09/19/2011

This is just the start of the US Water Wars! That will be a direct result of the Climate Change that most of those (republican) governors insist is not happening. Oh well sometimes there is justice.

[Jim Milks]

08:16 PM on 09/19/2011

Georgia was so desperate for water in 2008 that they tried to move their border with Tennessee so they could divert the Tennessee River to Atlanta. 2008 is also the last time a water fight erupted over Lake Lanier.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/09/AR2008020902283.html