Listen in: SELC’s Gil Rogers weighs in as Georgia, Florida prepare for Supreme Court water battle
The decades-long battle between Florida and Georgia (and sometimes Alabama) over water use in the river systems shared by the three states is picking up steam again, as Georgia recently filed its response to Florida’s lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The high court agreed last year to hear Florida’s suit, which challenges what the state says is an unchecked depletion of water resources on Georgia’s part. As a result of high water consumption around the growing metro-Atlanta area, Florida claims there is not enough water flowing down into its river systems to sustain the state’s lucrative oyster industry.
As both states gear up for what may potentially be a long fight in the U.S. Supreme Court, Senior Attorney Gil Rogers talked to Atlanta’s NPR station WABE about what we can expect from the latest round of water wars:
“Ultimately it’s going to have to be the states and all of these users of these river systems coming together and settling on some kind of fair formula that allows for all of these competing needs to be harmonized, and allows for enough water to remain in these systems for them to be healthy.”