By Associated Press
Atlanta, GA – Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue is responding to the Alabama governor's request for more water in an ongoing dispute involving the two states.
Perdue says the U-S government already is releasing too much water from Lake Allatoona. He says Alabama Governor Bob Riley's request for higher releases would drain Lake Allatoona and give Alabama little drought relief.
Perdue made the comments in a letter to U-S Army Secretary Pete Geren. Perdue says because of the drought, officials must be careful not to deplete the storage in Lake Allatoona.
Georgia and Alabama have waged a legal battle since 1990 over the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa River Basin that flows from northwest Georgia to Mobile Bay in Alabama. A federal judge in Birmingham is overseeing the case.
The two states along with Florida are involved in a fight over the water in the Apalachicola- Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin. Water in it flows from North Georgia to Apalachicola Bay in Florida.
The U-S Army Corps of Engineers operates Allatoona, which runs through Cobb, Bartow and Cherokee counties on the Etowah River.
Riley has said the Corps has "shortchanged'' his state 18 (b) billion gallons of water from Allatoona. The Corps says Allatoona can hold about 120 (b) billion gallons. Perdue says the Corps has sent eight-point-four (b) billion gallons of water downstream to Alabama since June from Allatoona and Carters Lake, a smaller reservoir on the Coosawatee River.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)