U.S. Water News Online
ATLANTA -- Details about the recent water agreement between Georgia and Alabama have been released online.
The river agreement -- which may not be final for a year -- outlines how much water Georgia can draw from the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, which flow through northwest Georgia to Alabama.
The governors of Georgia and Alabama reached the agreement several weeks ago. For years, Alabama has been trying to negotiate rules to make sure Atlanta's surging suburbs don't suck dry the rivers Alabama depends on for drinking water.
The proposed 30-year agreement sets storage requirements for Lake Allatoona and Carters Lake in northeast Georgia and minimum flow rates from those lakes and the Coosa River near Rome, Ga. It also limits the amount of water that can be transferred to other river basins.
Once finalized, the agreement would end 13 years of negotiations between the two states on the equitable distribution of water in the river basin.
Georgia is still in talks with Alabama and Florida to divvy up water from a separate basin, the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin. Both Florida and Alabama complain that Georgia is hogging the river water, endangering farms and fisheries downstream.
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