The Georgia-Alabama-Florida "water wars" are hardly that.
They're long, drawn-out bureaucratic affairs, with state appointees, business flacks and environmental lawyers hammering out endlessly subclaused legal documents that, in the end, fail to accomplish what needs to be accomplished: depoliticized water decisions based on hard scientific and economic data about what the three states really need from the poor Chattahoochee River.
As Govs. Perdue, Crist and Riley meet right now at the Governor's Mansion in Tallahassee to discuss the drought's effect on their hard-fought "compacts" on the river, they should keep in mind that one reason they're in this mess is because the states have lacked the political fortitude since the early '90 droughts to hammer out a long-term plan for this ever-thirsty region.
Yes, they're hard choices: Water use needs to be cut by 50 percent in the next few decades, even as the city grows. Four in 10 Georgians now say the drought is the top issue for the state -- the greatest public focus on a single issue in the history of the Peach State Poll.
Ending the political damming on this issue can only be done by one group: the politicians. That's what leadership is made of.
(Picture: A baptism in the Chattahoochee.)
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