Shelby vows action as Alabama-Georgia water war flares up

WASHINGTON – Interstate tensions flared up in the final hours of the congressional session last week when Georgia’s delegation killed legislation they said would have given Alabama an unfair advantage in a 25-year-old battle over water rights.

Republican Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama responded by announcing that the appropriations subcommittee he chairs will investigate withdrawals of water from reservoirs located upstream from Alabama and Florida.

Hydropower new weapon in Alabama-Florida-Georgia water wars

“Farmers, environmentalists, power companies and other constituents in Alabama and Florida have expressed sincere and well-founded concerns that local water supply entities in Georgia are violating federal contracts and significantly disadvantaging the citizens, commerce and environments of Alabama and Florida as a result,” Shelby wrote to U.S. Attorney Kenyen Brown in Mobile.

In his letter, Shelby asks Brown and other Justice Department officials to meet with him in January about enforcement of water usage agreements.

Alabama, Florida and Georgia have a long history of legal and political skirmishes over water rights. The current battle involves whether the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is letting local water authorities in metro Atlanta take more water than they're allowed, shortchanging everyone else downstream.

In the latest dramatic twist, Georgia’s congressional delegation appealed all the way up to House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to edit a paragraph Shelby had added to a $1.1 trillion catch-all federal spending bill.

The original provision, part of a regular appropriations bill written earlier this year, would have required the Justice Department to audit all water usage contract violations reported by the Army Corps in the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa river basin that starts in north Georgia and flows through central and southwest Alabama.

The provision was later broadened to apply to all water contract violations in all river basins, but the Georgia delegation was still alarmed.

“We feel like this infringes on the states’ rights issue of dealing with the waters between Georgia, Florida and Alabama,” Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., told the House Rules Committee on Dec. 16. “The best solution here is for Congress to stay out.”

Ryan agreed.

“There was a concern that someone was trying to place a thumb on the scale in this water war, and we wanted to make sure that was not the case,” Ryan said Friday.

After he intervened, the spending bill was changed to say, “The agreement does not adopt language in either the House or the Senate report regarding Federal water usage violations.”

The House and Senate passed the spending bill on Friday. After President Obama signed it later that day, Georgia lawmakers declared victory.

“I am pleased (Alabama’s) efforts to inject the federal government in a purely state issue and cost Georgia potentially millions more in legal costs were thwarted,” Collins said. “Ongoing negotiations about Georgia’s water and how it is allocated should be handled at the state level, and pending court cases will be allowed to proceed unimpeded.”

Florida officials have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review their dispute with Georgia over water flows from Atlanta into Apalachicola Bay, where oyster beds need a flow of fresh water.

The issue of water contract violations has come up before. In a congressional hearing two years ago, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., alleged that one Georgia county was pulling more water from Lake Allatoona than authorized and that the Army Corps hadn't done enough to stop it.

A Corps official responded that there had been previous infractions, but the county was currently in compliance and withdrawals were monitored daily.

Lake Allatoona is at the top of the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa River Basin, which supports dams, lakes, rivers and streams throughout most of central Alabama, including Montgomery. The state has argued for years that the Corps, which operates the federal reservoir, has been too stingy releasing water during dry periods and too deferential to metro Atlanta's needs for drinking water supply.

Contact Mary Troyan at mtroyan@usatoday.com