Federal judge sides with Georgia in ‘water wars’ with Alabama

by | Apr 1, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service

ATLANTA – The state of Georgia has won another legal case in its long-running “water wars” with Florida and Alabama.

A federal judge Monday sided with Georgia, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), and the Cobb County-Marietta Water Authority in a dispute over allocation of water from Lake Allatoona.

The decision upheld the Corps’ decision in 2021 to grant Metro Atlanta’s water supply requests from the lake and allocate more of the reservoir to meet the long-term needs of Cartersville and Bartow County. The state of Alabama had challenged the federal agency’s decision, arguing it would allocate too much water from the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT) River Basin to Georgia.

“Backed by thorough analysis, factfinding, and experience, the Corps determined that granting Georgia’s water-supply request would have little, if any, effect” on Alabama’s water needs, U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan wrote in a 38-page decision. “The record is replete with evidence showing negligible or non-significant impacts.”

Danny Johnson, managing director of natural resources at the ARC, praised the ruling.

“We are pleased to have a final decision that brings long-awaited certainty to all ACT stakeholders after decades of litigation,” he said. “This ruling affirms our communities’ responsible management and investment in water resources. We look forward to collaboration with all of the stakeholders in our shared river basins to address water challenges together.”

In Georgia’s other long-running water wars battle with the state of Florida, the U.S. Supreme Court also sided with Georgia, ruling in 2021 that Florida failed to prove its allegations that Georgia’s water consumption from the Chattahoochee and Flint river systems caused the failure of Florida’s oyster industry in Apalachicola Bay.

Representatives of water supply systems in Gwinnett, Forsyth and Hall counties finalized an agreement with the state of Georgia the following year guaranteeing them water from Lake Lanier through 2050.

Judge tosses lawsuit challenging Georgia voting machines

by | Apr 1, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service

ATLANTA – A federal court judge has dismissed a lawsuit seeking to stop Georgia from using electronic voting machines.

Monday’s ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg ends a long-running legal dispute that predated the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, which prompted a flurry of challenges from Republicans claiming widespread election fraud after Democrat Joe Biden defeated then-President Donald Trump in the Peach State. None of those cases prevailed.

The lawsuit over Georgia’s voting machines was filed back in 2017 by several individual voters represented by the Coalition for Good Governance, a ballot-security advocacy group. When the state spent $104 million to replace its voting machines with a new system in 2019, the group transferred the case to that new system.

The lawsuit questioned the security and reliability of the voting machines. But in Monday’s ruling, Totenberg declared the plaintiffs had not shown any proof that they had suffered legal harm because of the technology.

“From day one, we knew these accusations were meritless,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wrote in a statement released Monday night. “Our local election officials are professionals. And the voters of this state know that their votes are counted securely, accurately, and quickly.”

The machines the state bought from Dominion Voting Systems in 2019 feature touchscreens and optical scanners that record a paper print-out of a voter’s completed ballot. The General Assembly passed legislation last year to remove QR codes – which had been found to confuse some voters – from those paper backups.