Wednesday, January 16, 2008
News As water plan trickles through General Assembly, critics point out its faults
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 10:37 PM
What's bound to happen to the state's first-ever comprehensive water plan? Even though both the state House and Senate Environment and Natural Resources committees have met, it's still too early to tell.
State Environmental Protection Director Carol Couch, appearing before Senate and House environment committees last night and this morning, respectively, worked to dispel the "myths" about the water plan. This wasn't a "water grab" by metro Atlanta, she said, but an effort to "[create] a level playing field." The 25-member councils in each water-planning district were not, as Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority Executive Director Chris Clarke put it, "water czars." The councils would merely act as liaisons between the state and municipalities. And the plan, as Couch, Clarke, and many members of the Legislature have said, is not a "lock box," but a "living document" that is subject to tinkering and adjustment.
The environmental community isn't sold on the idea, and, frankly, wouldn't mind if the plan's rubber teeth morphed into fangs. Gil Rogers of the Southern Environmental Law Center spoke at both hearings on behalf of the Georgia Water Coalition and outlined the vagaries of the three-year effort. He says the plan's language is lax -- too many sentences include "should" rather than "shall." Some river basins, as outlined in the plan, travel through several proposed districts. The Chattahoochee basin, for example, is divided by three. If disputes between districts arise, how would they be resolved? How the plan addresses such a concern is "anemic" at best, Rogers says
The business community loves the product of the three-year effort that, according to EPD's Couch, included a strong amount of public input. Name a business interest or organization that banks on an ample water supply -- home builders, industry, agribusiness, chambers of commerce -- and they stood before the committees to give their blessing. And as one environmentalist put it after last night's two-hour meeting, "Funny how the people who got us into all this mess are the ones saying they love [the plan]." Missing from those expressions of adoration: Utility companies such as Southern Co., which according to the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, gobble up a healthy portion of the state's water.
The Senate committee voted unanimously in favor of a resolution supporting the plan. The House committee delayed a vote but may hold one at its next meeting, Thursday morning at 8:30. Word around the Gold Dome today is that Senate Republicans have concerns over the 11 water-planning districts presented to them. The regions are decided on county lines, not river basins, as environmentalists, scientists and many others have urged. There are also mumblings about a push for criteria regarding interbasin transfers -- the second most widely criticized aspect of the plan and the one that worries downstream communities the most -- be written into law. But with the issue's urgency, such a move may not even budge.
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