A win in water battle, but more to be done

A lawyer from Maine is responsible for the biggest news to affect Georgia this past week.

Ralph Lancaster, a special master appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court, sided with Georgia in its legal battle with Florida over the sharing of water from the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers.

Florida wanted Georgia to cap how much water it took out of those rivers. For the 5.4 million residents of metro Atlanta, that would have meant rolling back its consumption to 1992 levels, when the region’s population was 3 million.

That could have cost Georgia nearly $2.5 billion a year in economic losses, according to an analysis the state presented during the trial Lancaster conducted over five weeks late last year in Portland, Maine. Florida claimed those losses would amount to only about $100 million.

In his recommendation to the Supreme Court, Lancaster said Florida had “failed to show” that a cap on consumption was needed.

It was Georgia’s latest victory in the water wars, a string of courtroom skirmishes with Florida and its ally in these conflicts, Alabama, that began decades ago.

This latest battle began in 2013, when Florida sued Georgia, claiming that metro Atlanta residents and southwest Georgia farmers were using too much water, causing harm to downstream aquatic species. In particular, Florida was blaming Georgia for the collapse of the oyster industry in Apalachicola Bay. Georgia countered that Florida’s own poor management was responsible for the disaster.

Georgia helped its case through its water conservation efforts. Gov. Nathan Deal’s office provided data that show that metro Atlanta is withdrawing 10 percent less water than it did a decade ago despite adding more than 1 million residents.

Even with Lancaster’s finding, the water war will likely continue to drip, drip, drip.

The Supreme Court could reject his recommendation. Congress could step in, and the three states’ congressional delegations have bared their knuckles in the past. More lawsuits seem certain.

Lancaster actually mapped out a course that Florida could take. He said the state erred by not including the Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the water coming out of Lake Read more of our coverage: http://www.myajc.com/ georgia-legislature/ Track legislation: Georgia Legislative Navigator at http://legislativenavigator. myajc.com/ Join the conversation: Twitter at http://Twitter. com/GAPoliticsNews or Facebook at http:// facebook.com/ gapoliticsnewsnow/ Check out our weekly video recap featuring our legislative reporters, including James Salzer’s “Phrase of the Week,” at Lanier. “Without the Corps as a party, the Court cannot order the Corps to take any particular action,” he wrote.

So the corps may want to keep an eye out for process servers and take evasive action.

‘Upskirting’ could lead to prison jumpsuits

It’s taken 240 years, but the Georgia General Assembly is finally getting around to making it illegal to surreptitiously take photos up a woman’s skirt.

Yeah, that’s not illegal in Georgia — for now.

The state Court of Appeals last year, in overruling an invasion-of-privacy conviction against a former grocery clerk in Houston County, ruled that there is no specific law that bans the practice known as “upskirting.” Don’t be a jerk is merely a guideline.

That could soon change. The state Senate voted unanimously Wednesday in support of state Sen. Larry Walker III’s Senate Bill 45, which would make upskirting a felony with a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine up to $100,000.

If SB 45 doesn’t make it, a similar measure, House Bill 9, has been introduced by state Rep. Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, to accomplish the same end. The House approved it Friday on a vote of 156-1.