From THE NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA – By KEITH LAING
THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, Jan. 12, 2009…After huddling last month with Gov. Charlie Crist and Alabama Gov. Bob Riley to renew efforts to resolve a long-standing water dispute, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has hinted a deal could be in the pipes, though Florida officials are more cautious.
Perdue told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that if a deal is not reached during Georgia’s 40-day legislative session, which began this week, he would consider calling a special session to ratify a water agreement, expressing optimism that such a resolution was soon in the offing.
“I sense a renewed spirit of cooperation between Florida and Alabama, in order to get this done,” Perdue told the newspaper. “We are committed to doing it in the regular session. But frankly, if we get a deal that doesn’t fall into the parameters of that, I believe water is an issue for which I would be willing to call a special session, to ratify a compact among our states.”
Florida officials have been generally mum on where talks are and a state Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman was more cautious on Tuesday than Perdue.
“The discussions are in the early stages,” DEP spokeswoman Dee Ann Miller said in a statement sent to The News Service. “Florida remains committed to working with Georgia and Alabama to reach a mutually agreed on plan which is science-based and will protect the Apalachicola River and Bay ecosystem. We will continue to seek to protect Florida’s environment, economy and quality of life.”
The neighboring governors are trying to work out a plan for sharing the water that comes from the Atlanta area through the Chattahoochee River and down into the Flint and Apalachicola Rivers, a decades-long dispute that came to head in federal court room last year. Citing the need for water for power and for keeping a healthy seafood industry where the system dumps into the Gulf of Mexico, Florida and Alabama argue that Atlanta takes more water than it should at the head waters of the Chattahoochee.
A federal judge recently agreed, giving the states three years to work out a more equitable agreement or the allocations for each will revert to 1970s levels. All three states’ populations have gone up since then, but metro Atlanta’s has quadrupled in size, putting Georgia in a major water deficit.
Few details of what the states want to see for a flow plan emerged from the tri-state water talks last month and Perdue did not say that a deal was any closer to being reached than it was when the three governors huddled in December in Montgomery. Perdue did however say to the Atlanta paper on Tuesday that there was a sense of urgency in reaching a deal in what will be the final year in office for all three governors.
“I appealed to my colleagues that, if we’re going to leave a legacy in our states of solving this, rather than punting it to another administration, we’ve got to move very quickly,” Perdue, who will barred from seeking re-election this year by term-limits, said to the AJC. “I think they received that well.”
Evidenced by Perdue’s early special session talk, an agreement would have to be approved by all three state legislatures. But a spokesman for Gov. Crist, who is leaving office early to run for the U.S. Senate this year, also told the News Service of Florida that Perdue’s talk of having Georgia lawmakers ratify a water compact may have been a bit premature.
“We’re always optimistic that the three states will reach an agreement, but I don’t think there was anything specific coming from the last meeting in terms of a deal coming in the next couple of weeks,” said Sterling Ivey, a Crist spokesman.
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