US Court Tosses Water Restriction On Metro Atlanta : NPR
A federal appeals panel handed Georgia a victory Tuesday by overturning a lower court ruling that would have significantly restricted the main source of water for roughly 3 million people in metro Atlanta starting next year.
The decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sets aside a nearly two-year-old ruling that communities in metro Atlanta had little legal right to take drinking water from Lake Lanier. In that lower court ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson said he would sharply restrict water withdrawals from the lake starting in July 2012 unless the governors in Georgia, Alabama and Florida reached a deal to end a long-running water feud. No deal has been reached, though the governors were meeting on Tuesday.
Magnuson admitted his order was a "draconian result" because it restricted water use from Lake Lanier to levels last seen in the 1970s, when the metro region was a fraction of the size.
The appeals panel sent the case back to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a decision on whether metro Atlanta can get more water before the legal action proceeds.
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