Rep. Harry Geisinger, R-Roswell, is again trying to divert water from the Tennessee River to metro Atlanta.
“That will solve our water problems for the next 100 years,” Geisinger told this InsiderAdvantage writer. The legislation could help resolve a border dispute with Tennessee dating back nearly 200 years, as well as a conflict with Florida and Alabama, which claim metro Atlanta takes too much water from the Chattahoochee River.
Geisinger’s HB 4 would change state law prohibiting the North Georgia Water Planning District from taking water from rivers outside of the district. The bill would allow interbasin transfers “from a river with an annual average flow of at least 15 billion gallons.” Geisinger said that the Tennessee River has a water flow of 24 billion gallons at Nickajack Lake, 15 times more than the Chattahoochee’s flow at Buford Dam. Attorney Brad Carver of Atlanta, who’s gained national attention for efforts to get Tennessee to give Georgia land to settle a border-drawing mistake by surveyors in 1818, said a pipeline would transport enough water to more than double Atlanta’s daily needs.
Carver, senior managing director of government affairs for Hall Booth Smith, has pushed efforts to move Georgia’s border north to the 35th parallel, which goes through the middle of Nickajack Lake.
In pushing the legislation in last year’s legislative session, Geisinger offered Tennesee a deal to keep 65.5 square miles of the disputed territory, preserving the current boundary line, with Georgia receiving a 1.5-square-mile strip of land for building the pipeline, which would deliver up to 1 billion gallons of water a day to Georgia, Alabama and Florida, according to reports. Tennessee has not yet agreed to the swap, along with refusing to enter into negotiations to resolve the border dispute. A legislative resolution two years ago directed Attorney General Sam Olens to file a suit in the U.S. Supreme Court if Tennessee didn’t agree to move the border north.
The Tennesee Valley Authority estimates the river has at least 1 billion gallons of excess capacity each day, just half of which would meet Atlanta’s water needs for the next century, Carver said in a 2013 article.
Both states orginally agreed the boundary line should be at the 35th parallel, but Georgia- appointed surveyor James Carmack and Tennesee’s James S. Gaines mistakenly set the boundary line about a mile south of where it was supposed to be, either because of bad weather or fear of Indian attack, according to a report in the Chattanooga Times-Free Press. Over the years, Georgia’s unsuccessfully sought to get its territory back.
