Just when I had written off plans for Georgia to push their border a half-mile further north as the sort of weird bill one normally sees introduced at the start of a state legislative session, there’s this story from the AJC:
Last week, the House and Senate passed separate measures requiring the state of Georgia to revisit its longstanding border dispute with Tennessee. The legislation was immediately pronounced an international punchline. The state Senate encouraged the giggles by singing a round of “This Land Is My Land” prior to unanimous passage.
But don’t be fooled. The people involved in this are looking at a water shortage, exacerbated by drought, that could jeopardize thousands of billions of dollars in development over the next 50 years. A wet state grows, a dry one stagnates — and the competition with neighbors is fearsome.
Sponsors of the legislation are as serious as a heart attack.
“I don’t think it’s a gimmick,” Perdue told reporters a few hours after his computer demonstration. But the enthusiasm the governor showed in the basement had shifted to a diplomatic practicality.
“I think we have to be very careful in the way we proceed in this effort. As it gets more and more serious, the people of Tennessee get more and more concerned. There was probably a better way to do this — legislation’s a sort of in-your-face sort of thing,” the governor said.
I heard a rumor that Vols and Vandy fans have set aside intrastate rivalries, and are now patrolling the Nickajack Reservoir in a flotilla of bass boats.
The AJC also provides readers access to an 18-page memorandum entitled Tapping the Tennessee (1.8 meg pdf, converted from the AJC’s .doc format document) which goes into more detail about the history of the claim.