Georgia has spent nearly $6.7 million on outside legal fees to fight the tri-state water war, the state attorney general’s office said Tuesday.
And the Atlanta Regional Commission said it has spent $5 million on the same litigation over the water in Lake Lanier.
Russ Willard, spokesman for Attorney General Thurbert Baker, said the state had paid $6,661,578.09 to McKenna Long & Aldridge, the Atlanta firm representing Georgia in the litigation since 1996. Before that, Willard said, in-house counsel handled the case.
The Atlanta firm of King & Spalding has been handling the Atlanta Regional Commission’s litigation in the case at least since 1999, said Julie Ralston, communications director for the ARC. The $5 million total does not include the agency’s legal expenses from 1999 to 2001.
Ralston said the fees paid to King & Spalding came from metro municipalities that joined in the battle with the state, including the city of Atlanta and DeKalb and Fulton counties.
Tallying the legal costs from all sides of the battle will be difficult, since the case has engaged numerous parties in three states.
Gov. Sonny Perdue’s spokesman, Bert Brantley, said Tuesday that the spending was necessary because Georgia was sued by other states and had to defend itself.
“This isn’t action we’ve brought,” Brantley said. The money has also helped the state prepare for negotiations that, Brantley said, “have over the years produced some very positive changes.”
Todd Stacy, spokesman for Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, said he didn’t know how much the state had spent in legal fees, but said “neither state should spend another dime in court.”
Alabama initiated the fight over Lake Lanier when it filed a federal lawsuit in 1990. Florida joined the suit as a plaintiff later.
“This has gone on for too long,” Stacy said. “Governor Riley believes it’s time for the states to sit down and negotiate. The court has obviously held that the water grab [by Georgia] was illegal.”
U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson ruled two weeks ago that metro Atlanta has been drawing water from Lanier illegally for decades.
He gave the state three years to strike a deal with Alabama and Florida — or for Congress to settle the dispute with legislation. Absent a resolution, the judge said, he will cut Atlanta’s withdrawals from the lake to 1970s levels.
Today more than 3 million people in metro Atlanta depend on the waters of Lake Lanier; it has been the region’s lifeblood for 50 years.
Environmental activist Sally Bethea, long an opponent of Georgia’s position that it has rights to Lanier, said the legal battle has been a waste of time and money from the beginning.
“You look at the history ... and it’s been pretty clear that this was the outcome that we could all expect here,” said Bethea, who is executive director of the conservation group Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. “Georgia was going to lose, and the whole thing was going to end up in Congress.”
-- Aaron Gould Sheinin contributed to this report.
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