Florida asks US Supreme Court to end the water war

The decades old water war between Florida, Georgia and Alabama may finally be going to the US Supreme Court.

Alabama and Florida asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to take the case and decide how much water, if any, metro Atlanta can take from Lake Lanier.

If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case their decision will have a profound impact on water use from the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee Flint River System.

The core issue is how much water the city of Atlanta should be able to take from Lake Lanier which is a federal reservoir initially built for hydropower.

Currently the federal reservoir is one of the main sources of water for the millions of people in and around Atlanta, but Florida and Alabama have long claimed that Georgia is taking too much water from the system and hurting downstream users, especially the fishermen and oystermen who work the Apalachicola Bay.

The case has gone through a number of courts, but most recently the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that metro Atlanta had the right to tap Lake Lanier.

Attorneys representing Florida and Alabama have asked the high court to strike down that decision.

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