The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against Florida in a long-running dispute with Georgia over interstate water rights.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who delivered the court’s unanimous opinion, wrote that Florida had been unable to show sufficient evidence that Georgia’s consumption of its water had caused the collapse of the state’s oyster fisheries. The case concludes a battle between the two states that has stretched on for more than three decades.
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In the case, Florida argued that Georgia had used more than its share of water flowing from the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin, harming its ecosystems. Georgia countered that a severe drought in 2012 and Florida’s own mismanagement of its water was likely the cause of the oyster fishery collapse. Barrett wrote that, according to the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, there could be many other reasons for Florida’s fisheries to suffer.
“The precise causes of the Bay’s oyster collapse remain a subject of scientific debate, but the record evidence establishes at most that increased salinity and predation contributed to the collapse of Florida’s fisheries, not that Georgia’s overconsumption caused the increased salinity and predation,” Barrett wrote.
Barrett also wrote that Florida’s protests for exceptions to a report from a state-appointed special master, which had come to a similar conclusion, should be dismissed. That special master had found “a complete lack of evidence” that Georgia’s water consumption, which serves the Atlanta metro area and parts of rural Georgia, had anything to do with Florida’s ecological problems.
Barrett pointed to Florida’s own studies as a major reason why it could not prove Georgia was to blame and that Florida itself may be at fault.
“In 2011 and 2012, oyster harvests from the bay were larger than in any other year on record,” Barrett wrote. “That was in part because Florida loosened various harvesting restrictions out of fear — ultimately unrealized — that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill would contaminate its oyster fisheries. A former Florida official, one of Florida’s lead witnesses, acknowledged that these management practices ‘bent’ Florida’s fisheries ‘until (they) broke.’”
This is the second time the two states have gone to the Supreme Court over the issue, the first time being in 2018. At that time, the court ordered the case to be reheard before it could come back. The dispute arose in the 1990s when Florida sought to limit the amount of water Georgia could draw from the river.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried responded in a statement calling the ruling “disappointing.”
“The Court may have disagreed, but the hardworking Floridians of our oyster fisheries know that water overconsumption by Georgia has contributed to a 98% decline in value of Florida’s oyster catch,” she said.
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Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, on the other hand, praised the ruling, saying in a statement that the ruling “affirmed what we have long known to be true: Georgia’s water use has been fair and reasonable.”
“We will continue to be good stewards of our water resources, and we are proud to have obtained a positive resolution to this years-long dispute on behalf of all Georgians,” Carr said.
