THE CLOSER to bordering on stupid the idea, the more eagerly Georgia’s leaders embrace it.
How else to explain the stampede in both House and Senate to sign on to a resolution calling for creation of a boundary-line commission to seek to move the Georgia-Tennessee border back to the 35th parallel and thus rectify a probable surveying error made in 1818.
This is an old dispute, previous attempts at finding a solution having failed and the sole intention of this emerging now being to offer something other than prayer as a solution to the Atlanta metro’s water shortage. This is a pie-in-the-sky effort to get a piece of the Tennessee River (and Nickajack Dam) into Georgia where it would supposedly forever satiate Atlanta unquenchable thirst.
“We have a rightful claim to the land,” intoned Sen. Preston Smith, R-Rome, as he signed on. “It’s about our ability to work with the natural resources associated with that acreage.”
Tennessee is, of course, both miffed and amused by the latest Georgia grandstanding. “I would offer to settle this dispute over a friendly game of football, but that would be unfair to the State of Georgia,” said Tennessee State Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga, rubbing salt in the wound inflicted by the Volunteers upon the Bulldogs last year.
ACTUALLY, a teeny-tiny bit of understanding of both geography and history might serve the legislators better. There is no chance — none — that this will ever happen. One suspects Georgia’s leaders know it, but just having lost one “water war” to Alabama in federal court they’re desperate to open up another front.
Even if Tennessee and Georgia agreed to such a change, it would have to be approved by Congress. Moreover, at the time the line was mistakenly placed a mile too far south, the 1796 boundary set by Congress extended to the Mississippi River. Alabama and Mississippi’s borders with Tennessee aren’t aligned with the 35th parallel either (nor is that of North Carolina).
Were the border shifted, not only would Georgia wind up with access to the Tennessee River, it would also get a big piece of Chattanooga. And Mississippi would wind up with part of Memphis. Georgia is threatening to set off a new war between the states.
By the way, the surveyor who made the mistake, University of Georgia professor James Camak, repeatedly asked the governor of that time for better equipment with which to do the job and was turned down. Georgia politicians were too cheap to do anything right even back in those days, it seems. Actually, this provides a pretty good lesson in how chickens come home to roost.
NOT ONLY THAT, but do legislators realize where all that lovely water (15 times the flow of the Chattahoochee River) is located? It’s on the other side of Lookout Mountain. To get it to the Atlanta metro would mean pumping it up over the mountain or drilling a tunnel through it.
Besides, possession being nine-tenths of the law doesn’t mean Tennessee controls that water. The federal government does through the Tennessee Valley Authority. Removing or relocating water from the river requires TVA permission, not some state permit.
Perhaps most dangerous of all for Georgia is that the nobility of taking the position that old legal mistakes should be rectified can be rapidly turned upon it. What profit is there in gaining the Tennessee River if Georgia loses all of North Georgia because of it?
The mistake cited appears real. A federal order to place the border at the 35h parallel was not done correctly. But then, neither was the removal of the Cherokee Nation (the Trail of Tears). One would probably wait forever to see the General Assembly similarly insist that this old wrong be rectified and all Indian lands returned ... or properly compensated.
IT REALLY DOESN’T matter what happened 200 years ago or whether errors were made. Errors were made in Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, too, but nobody’s going to offer a do-over.
Georgia’s continuing desperation to get more water for Atlanta at somebody else’s expense and without paying for it threatens Greater Rome’s supplies, not to mention those of Alabama and Florida. Now Tennessee has reason to build a border wall to keep illegal Georgians out. And South Carolina is already nervous about Georgia’s intentions regarding the Savannah River.
Pretty soon a thirsty Georgia will have no friends left while having made enemies of those whose cooperation is necessary to reach a workable compromise regarding water sharing.
At the rate the state’s politicians are going the governor, who likes to pray for rain, is going to have to spend 24 hours a day on his knees. That’s going to be the only way left for Georgia to get the water it needs without spending a lot of tax money to get it.
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