Tennessee River in play in Fla.-Ga. water war

The special master appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the water war between Georgia and Florida dusted off this week a decade-old plan to tap the Tennessee River to ensure more water flows to metro Atlanta and, eventually, downstream to the Sunshine State.

Ralph Lancaster Jr., the Maine attorney who recently wrapped up the water war trial, ordered Georgia and Florida back to the negotiating table to consider the “importation of water” from outside the Chattahoochee River region “to supplement streamflow during drought periods.”

He also told attorneys for both states to continue mediation talks “in a good faith effort” to resolve the nearly three-decade-long dispute over a fair sharing of the Chattahoochee, Flint and Apalachicola rivers. Lancaster set a Jan. 26 deadline for attorneys to report back to him on their negotiations. He will then make a recommendation to the nation’s high court, which is likely to rule later this year on whether Georgia is to blame for Florida’s water woes.

Florida sued Georgia in 2013 claiming the upriver state wastes water from the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers, as well as an underlying aquifer, to the detriment of Florida’s oyster industry, endangered species and its residents’ way of life. In seeking an “equitable apportionment” of the water flowing between the states, Florida seeks a cap on Georgia’s overall water consumption, as well as a 40 percent increase in the amount of water flowing into the state from Georgia during drought.

Read entire story: on-ajc.com/ Tennessee_water by Fulton Superior Court Chief Judge Gail Tusan says the state has improperly refused to extend in-state tuition to this group, which the federal government has declared “legally present” in this country.

“I really didn’t think we would actually win this because of all the other decisions we had in the past,” said Rigoberto Rivera, a plaintiff and Roswell High School graduate who was brought to the U.S. from Mexico as a child.

The ruling comes nearly four years after Rivera and fellow plaintiffs began their legal odyssey, which at one point reached the Georgia Supreme Court. But the legal battle is not over.

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