Lt. Gov. hosts water issue-related radio show

LAKE LANIER ISLANDS - Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle Friday looked back on the 20-plus years of the tri-state water wars and declared that its time for them to end - and everyone involved needs to understand the needs of all three states.

Cagle hosted a special edition of the Martha Zoller Show and one hour of the Bill & Joel Morning Show on WDUN NEWS TALK 550, like AccessNorthGa.com, a division of Jacobs Media Corporation. The broadcast originated from Lake Lanier Islands.

"No one's willing to step up and really take the bull by the horns and do what's necessary and agree upon those minimum level of flows that Alabama needs along with Florida," Cagle said.

A long list of leaders from around Georgia and the Lake Lanier area appeared with Cagle during the nearly four-hour broadcast.

Georgia House Speaker Glenn Richardson was among them.

Richardson said he is not optimistic that Georgia, Florida and Alabama will be able to settle their water wars among themselves. Richardson said, however, the conservation steps Georgia is taking could have a positive impact with the courts.

"I think it's the right message for the courts to signal to them that we are serious about this, but we need our water," he said.

Sen. Johnny Isakson said it's time, after years of squabbling, for the three states to bring the disputes to an end, "bring our governors together and reach a good usage agreement and a good compact for the 21st Century."

But Isakson said another key piece of the puzzle is the updating of the manuals governing the operation of Lake Lanier.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss was Cagle's first guest and he said that raising the full pool level of Lake Lanier by 2 feet (to 1,073) is still a possibility as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continues updating those manuals. Chambliss said that came out of a meeting he hosted in Washington earlier this week involving a number of state legislators from Georgia, as well as corps officials and Congressman Nathan Deal of Gainesville.

"Obviously, there was no way to get an affirmative answer to 'yes we will do this,' but just the fact that they are going to be looking at that in this process is a good sign," he said.