Georgia Loses Federal Case in a Dispute about Water

Georgia Loses Federal Case in a Dispute about Water
Today Atlanta, Georgia lost a significant court case, over the amount of water they wanted to take from an Atlanta area reservoir. Alabama and Florida, who were opposed to Atlanta taking the water, were glad to hear that Atlanta will not be able to take as much water as they wanted. Atlanta was unable to take the water because they had not obtained the correct approval.
Alabama and Florida had said that Atlanta would take the water that normally flows downstream to their consumers. The two states had brought the appeal suit up to cancel out the agreement they had with the Army Corps of engineers. The three judge panel, of the United States Court of Appeals of the Columbia Circuit agreed that the agreement was not valid, because the two parties had not acquired Congressional approval. The 2003 contract between the Army corps, and Georgia was permitted to increase its share of the reservoir allocated for water storage to 22.9 from 13.9 percent. Florida and Alabama had been fighting this agreement for the last two decades, and final took it to court. Alabama and Florida, which are dependable on the water from Lake Lanier for power generation, industry, recreation and commercial fishing, argued Georgia no right to take the water from the lake. The lake was originally was built for hydropower. Georgia depends on the water from that reservoir, but other states argue that Georgia had bad planning for water usage, so there for they now depend on it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/us/06water.html?ref=us