The next round of oral arguments in the nearly 30 year long water war between Florida and Georgia will be heard in December.

 The next round of oral arguments in the nearly 30 year long water war between Florida and Georgia will be heard in December.

Paul Kelly, the Santa Fe-based senior judge the Supreme Court appointed as the case’s special master, announced last week that the next round of oral arguments will occur in an Albuquerque federal courtroom on December the 16th. 

This case, which will likely define the future of this area, resolves around how water in the Apalachicola Chattahoochee Flint River system is shared by Georgia, Florida and Alabama.

The State of Florida filed suit in the US Supreme Court in 2014 to try to reduce the amount of water Georgia is taking from the River System.

Until recently, Apalachicola Bay accounted for approximately 10 percent of the nation’s Eastern oyster supply. 

The oyster industry in Apalachicola collapsed in 2012 leading to a Commercial Fisheries Disaster Declaration from the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2013. 

Florida believes that Georgia’s water consumption has brought historically-low water flows into the Apalachicola River and Bay and has caused oysters to die because of higher salinity, increased disease and predator intrusion.

Florida says Georgia's “largely unrestrained”agricultural consumption of water as a major factor on the basin water flow.

The number of acres Georgia farmers have under irrigation has soared from 75,000 acres in 1970 to more than 825,000 today.  

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