Lake Lanier Water Wars Fought and Negotiated in Secrecy

There is both good news and bad news this week for people following the dispute between Georgia, Florida and Alabama over the use of water in Lake Lanier.

The good news is that representatives for Governors Sonny Perdue, Charlie Crist and Bob Riley are working on a solution and aim to finish before their elected terms end in November. The bad news is that the public will have no access to the discussions. Judge Magnuson, who originally set the 3-year deadline for a decision, agreed on the governors' request to keep negotiations secret.

The Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, a group working for clean water in North Georgia, comments that they are:

"pleased that the states are finally talking; however, we believe that the secrecy in the negotiations may undermine the protection of our strained water resources ... We actually keep asking ourselves ‘What is it that has got to be concealed here?'""

Wilton Rooks, who is VIce President of the Lake Lanier Association and also Chairman of the ACF Stakeholders, an advocacy group representing 95 organization in the water wars commented:

“Making decisions that affect the lives of millions of people in secrecy will not garner the support necessary to sustain the implementation of the decisions,"

A Pattern of Silence in the Water Wars

Negotiations in secret fit a pattern that has continued throughout the dispute of Lake Lanier's water. Governor Sonny Perdue assemble the Georgia Water Task Force to analyse the situation and make recommendations for the state. The Task Force worked entirely behind closed doors at the Governor's Mansion in Atlanta.

Also making those left outside the negotiations angry is that the heavy representation given to corporate and developer interests in the secret negotiations. Jay Bookman at the Atlanta Journal Constitution complained that:

"In many states, a panel created to do such important work would be thoroughly seeded with experts in the field — hydrologists, people who know water law, environmental experts, scientists. It might also have a broad range of citizens, from businesspeople to community leaders. But this being Georgia, the Perdue task force is dominated by corporate executives. By my count, more than 50 of its 87 members are corporate executives, bankers, developers or utility officials. Sixteen are government officials. Just four represent environmental groups, and three of those four groups — the Nature Conservancy, the Conservation Fund and the Trust for Public Lands — are land-acquisition organizations with little expertise in water issues."

The Georgia Water Task Force did send out a press release claiming that they'd welcome the views of others. They suggested that the public could email their ideas to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . However, that website had not actually been activated and has not even now. Adding fuel to the fire of those who thought that corporate interests were dominating the negotiations, the website was owned and operated by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

Comments (1)

lakeman

January 14, 2010

The Corps of Engineers are supposed to be the experts here. Why are we letting politicians decide the solution? Leave the politics out of the mix and the Corps can probably do their job and manage the system properly. It was politics that drained the lake in the first place. Anybody that thinks the drought caused 1050msl, 2 years in a row, is not seeing the big picture here.

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