 |
|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
|
Attorney General Thurbert Baker appoints River Center Co-Directors Ron Carroll and Laurie Fowler to special council for water issues By Lee Shearer ''It is extremely important,'' said Baker. ''Some of these issues being
debated will have a profound impact on where Georgia goes in the next
few decades.'' Baker spoke at a day-long conference on water law sponsored by the Association County Commissioners of Georgia, an industry group called the Water Systems Council and two UGA units, the law school and the Carl Vinson Institute of Government. The session was aimed at county attorneys and other local government officials. Baker also touched on another theme that came up repeatedly in the conference - whether holders of water withdrawal permits, obtained at no cost from the state of Georgia, ought to be able to sell them to a third party at a profit, and if so, under what circumstances. Such permit selling could be in conflict with both the U.S. and state constitutions, at least as it was proposed in a bill introduced in this year's legislative session, Baker said. Baker brought copies of a letter outlining his concerns that he had given to state Sen. Hugh Gillis, D-Soperton, in April, while the bill was still being debated. The legislation, House Bill 237, ultimately failed, leaving not only permit trading but a proposed statewide water plan in limbo. Opinions were divided among speakers about whether water permit trading should ultimately be allowed, but there was much more agreement that the state needs to know more about some more fundamental questions before it even begins to address the question of setting up a market in water rights. Among those questions is how much water is actually being used, and where, and how much water must be left in streams and underground aquifers to avoid permanent environmental damage. Georgia has issued some 20,000 permits to farmers to withdraw water, but no one knows how much is being used - or what would happen if a lot of permit holders actually began withdrawing as much as their permits allow. According to another conference speaker, John Sibley of the Georgia Conservancy, the state EPD estimates that only 2 to 6 percent of the total withdrawal capacity represented by the 20,000 permits is actually used. About 1,300 of those permit-holders have large limits that total about 12 billion gallons a day; by contrast, the city of Albany in 2001 used just a fraction of that amount, 17.6 million gallons a day, he said. It's long past time Georgia and several other Southern states begin addressing water quality issues, such as how much water must be left in streams to ensure ecological health, or reducing pollution going into streams, said Jimmy Palmer, administrator of the federal Environ-mental Protection Agency's Region 4, which includes Georgia, Alabama and seven other Southern states. ''If the states don't step up and begin - and Georgia has begun, though
it has a ways to go - shouldering the load that is theirs under the law
- there is legislation that would displace the states with respect to
managing the states' water resources,'' he said. Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Wednesday, August 27, 2003. |
||||||||
|
Visit Our Partners:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
