http://www.miamiherald.com/news/colu...ry/280876.html
Georgia's dry, but guv sounds like a wet hen
By FRED GRIMM
Recriminations have been flowing out of Georgia in torrents. Water? Not so much.
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has been squealing like a stuck pig, claiming Florida and the Corps of Engineers and pointy-headed environmentalists have conspired to deprive the suffering residents in drought-stricken Atlanta of their very drinking water.
The Georgia congressional delegation showed up at the governor's mean-talking press conference on Friday. Us Floridians, they said bitterly, were willing to sacrifice actual human beings, the Georgian variety, just to save a bunch of slimy river mussels.
Down in Apalachicola, the nasty talk out of Georgia was beyond irritating. ''I wouldn't say I was irritated. I'd say I was mad as hell,'' said Dan Tonsmeire, who runs the Apalachicola Riverkeeper, the advocacy group that looks after the fragile estuary of the Apalachicola River and bay.
POLITICAL MUSSEL?
Perdue and the North Georgia crowd are upset because the Corps makes sure that at least 5,000 cubic feet of water per second flows out of Lake Lanier and down the Chattahoochee River, a major tributary of the Apalachicola River. Lake Lanier also serves as the main reservoir for the Atlanta metropolitan area. Lingering drought conditions have left Lake Lanier nine feet below normal depths. And falling.
Perdue claims the Corps only persists in draining Lake Lanier to satisfy the draconian requirements of the U.S. Endangered Species Act, because if the Apalachicola River flow drops much further, it'll be the end of purple backclimber mussel. Georgia Congressman Phil Gringrey said the policy threatened to turn the people of Georgia ``into endangered species themselves.''
TO HECK WITH US
But sound bites flowing out of Georgia sound like lies in Apalachicola. More than mussels would be endangered if Georgia takes more out of the watershed. Shrimp, sturgeon and Apalachicola's famous oysters would be devastated. Less flow would inhibit the crawfish that sustain local birds and mammals. Mussels, Tonsmeire said, were ''the canaries in the coal mine.'' When they go, the entire Apalachicola estuary's in trouble.
But Perdue declared a disaster in Georgia and war on his neighbors. He asked President Bush to intervene. And he went to federal court seeking an injunction, to hell with the folks down river in Florida and Alabama.
Other natural disasters -- tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods -- inspire neighborly outpourings of sympathy, charity and caravans of relief trucks. Droughts inspire something else.
''Droughts bring out the worst,'' said Mark Svoboda of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Neb.
YEARS OF NEGLECT
Perdue told National Public Radio Monday evening that drastic, unneighborly measures were necessary because Georgia had never seen such a drought as this before.
Not since 1988 anyway. But the drought of 2007 hit after 19 years of unmitigated growth with no planning for the water demands of so many more people. It was as if water was an unlimited resource.
It wasn't. Not in metro Atlanta. Not in South Florida. Not in the growth corridors of the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama. The Sun Belt may have unlimited notions about growth and development but it doesn't have unlimited supply of the one essential resource.
''Somebody down the road is going to have to make some tough decisions,'' Svoboda said. ``You can't keep hooking up more people to the water supply.''