Water and Power - Southern Water, Southern Power - page 150

diesel- and gasoline-powered pumps before turning to electric systems. According to agri-
cultural research professionals, Georgia had “the fastest rate” of growth in irrigation in the
Southeast in the 1980s. Many factors contributed to farmers' shift to irrigation, including
increased corn prices, fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and center-pivot irrigation techno-
logy. Drought in the 1980s, however, was once again paramount among the factors that in-
duced growers to invest in irrigation technology. 14 According to a 2008 survey, growers ir-
rigated about 1.5 million acres in Georgia. Eighty-one percent of that acreage was watered
by more than 16,000 center pivots, and corn, cotton, and peanuts constituted 67 percent
of all irrigated crops. 15 Energy generation and agriculture production require a tremendous
amount of water, but they are not alone.
Nationally, municipal drinking water systems demanded 44 billion gallons of daily water
withdrawals in 2005. 16 The Southeast faces a series of energy, agricultural, and population
challenges, and the region's water future is tied to Georgia. Atlanta, the South Carolina up-
state, Charlotte, and Houston—the Sun Belt's economic powerhouses—have been locked
in a regional economic civil war for some time over aquariums, halls of fame, major athlet-
ic events, auto plants, national political conventions, and corporate headquarters. When the
Great Recession hit, a number observers suggested that Atlanta's competitors had seized
the upper hand. 17 The Great Recession did indeed hit metro Atlanta particularly hard in one
of the state's foremost commercial sectors: real estate. This major economic blow—and a
lack of new utility ratepayers—has in turn rippled into turbulent energy markets shaken by
the plummeting cost of natural gas, by conservative activist support for solar generation,
and by the flagging nuclear renaissance. 18 But the fate of these two industries ultimately
remains linked to another historically contentious issue: water.
If Georgia's political and economic leadership cannot resolve or head off three simmer-
ing cross-border conflicts, then the state's water-rich regions and immediate neighbors will
feel the repercussions. In the first conflict and at the time of this analysis, Georgia's lead-
ership sees no advantage to a tristate resolution with Alabama and Florida over allocation
of the ACF river basin. In late summer 2013, Florida filed suit in the U.S. Supreme Court
against Georgia seeking equitable allocation of water in the ACF. In late 2014 the Court ac-
cepted the case. Florida's governor claimed he wanted more water for the panhandle to sup-
port future growth and to protect the state's declining commercial oyster industry. 19 Long-
term water supply planning everywhere remains a guess at best without an ACF water-
sharing compact or a similar agreement for the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa basin, where
a second conflict with Alabama may lie in wait. In a third possible conflict, groundwa-
ter withdrawals from the Floridan Aquifer underlying the Southeastern Coastal Plain have
compromised one of the Atlantic coast's primary shared drinking-water sources. Savannah,
Ga., and South Carolina communities tap the Floridan, but the region's collective municipal
and industrial groundwater pumping has allowed salt water to contaminate and comprom-