Tennessee

I’ve written previously about Georgia’s desire to annex part of southeastern Tennessee to gain access to water in the Tennessee River, to alleviate pressure arising from poor planning prior to the drought.

The AJC has an article on what seems to be a more realistic solution—make nice with the feds, who actually own the plot of land Georgia really covets:

Georgia, though, could launch another legal attack. Federal land — not controlled by Tennessee — lies between Georgia and the river. The Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal agency that manages the river, owns the half-mile slice of largely untrammeled property separating Dade County, Ga., from the river.

TVA policy allows adjacent landowners to cross its property to reach the Tennessee River. Georgia, conceivably, could bypass a spat with the state by dealing directly with the federal government.

There are years of environmental bureaucracy that must be satisfied before such a plan could come to fruition, and of course Volunteer pride is still ruffled over the idea of Tennessee water going to alleviate Georgia’s lack of resource management. (Have Vols started patrolling Nickajack in their bass boats, I wonder?)

But at least this seems far more realistic than a TN-GA border war.

Seen in the Chattanoogan:

The mayor has officially proclaimed Feb. 27, 2008, as “Give our Georgia Friends a Drink Day.” The proclamation comes as a result of the Georgia Legislature passing a joint resolution that seeks to pursue reestablishing the boundary between Georgia and Tennessee.

The truck load of bottled water along with the proclamation will be delivered to the Georgia Legislature Wednesday morning.

“Please know that we are willing to help our neighbors to the south with this complimentary truck load of water,” said Mayor Littlefield. “And along with this water, we want to send Georgia legislators a message that focusing on conservation efforts would be much more productive than an ill-conceived land and water grab.”

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.

I’ve been reading Eric Flynt’s 1812: The Rivers of War an alternate-history fictional retelling of events during the War of 1812 in which the antics of some land-grabbing Georgians play a role.

So I was oddly amused to hear about current real-world antics of land- (and water-) grabbing Georgians. From the Tennesseean:

A resolution in Georgia’s legislature proposes to move the Tennessee-Georgia boundary about a mile to the north of where it now lies[...] The proposal elicited instant ridicule from residents of the area on Thursday, as well as tongue-in-cheek saber rattling from Tennessee lawmakers.

One state senator offered to settle the issue with a football game. Another suggested floating an armada of University of Tennessee fans down the Tennessee River to defend the state’s territory.

But behind the amusement is a serious issue that has bedeviled the Southeast: access to water. If the border is redrawn, the new state line would fall across Nickajack Reservoir. That would allow parched Georgians to tap into the waters of the dammed Tennessee River.[...]

The resolution, which has passed early hurdles but has not received final passage, claims that the boundary was erroneously surveyed in 1818 and that Georgia has never accepted it. The resolution calls for the creation of a “Georgia-Tennessee Boundary Line Commission” that would perform joint surveys and change the line to the “definite and true” boundary line: exactly following the 35th parallel.

Of course, it should be remembered that while Tennessee’s border was supposed to be set at the 35th parallel, 19th century surveyors were notoriously inaccurate about identifying the precise location of that line of latitude. If memory serves, the Tennessee State Constitution which includes a definition of the borders of the state, avoids specifying a specific line of latitude.

Why, even the famous intersection of 35° North, 90° West (famous to me, at least, since my bedroom growing up was precisely on 90° West) is a couple of miles inside Tennessee.

In case you’re wondering (and because I want to test out a modification to how I do the “Highway Feature of the Week” on this site), here’s a Google Maps view of the Alabama-Georgia-Tennessee tripoint, which shows just how close the border is to the reservoir in question:

About four and a half years ago, Memphis was knocked off the grid for a few days in the wake of Hurricane Elvis, and barely anyone in the mainstream media noticed.

However, having a tornado cause polling places to close early—that merits rapid media attention.

Authorities confirmed a tornado touchdown near Arlington, said Jeremy Heidt, spokesman for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

The Hickory Ridge Mall sustained “severe damage,” including a collapsed roof and walls, according to Staples, who said firefighters were still evacuating the building as of 6:40 p.m.

Added MFD division chief Daryl Payton: “We had to evacuate a large number of civilians, but fortunately there were some injuries but no medical transports. It was just a major time trying to evacuate people because people were afraid to leave the building.”

Thankfully, I haven’t seen wingnuts speculating on the Clinton campaign conjuring the tornadic weather to drive down Obama’s expected stronger support in the inner city portions of Memphis.

Folks at the Commercial Appeal in Memphis must contemplating what will happen at MEM if the rumored merger between Northwest and Atlanta. Planespotters and other amateur aviation enthusiasts seem to be in agreement that such a merger would mean the end of Northwest’s hub in Memphis, and an end to Delta’s hub in Cincinnati, due to their apparent redundant-ness with the larger domestic hubs of both airlines—Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Salt Lake City, and New York-JFK.

I’m basing my guess about the CA’s contemplations on an article that has appeared in the paper discussing the aftermath of American Airlines de-hubbing Nashville.:

Bill Carey remembers when the American Airlines hub dominated Nashville International Airport. Business and political leaders touted American’s 268 daily Nashville arrivals and departures. But local travelers paid high fares resulting from American’s 70 percent local market share.

Almost as soon as American de-hubbed Nashville in 1995 and significantly cut operations here, its vacant gates at the airport gradually began to fill with other airlines—especially low-fare Southwest Airlines, now Nashville’s dominant carrier. Southwest’s frequent $49-each-way promotional fares to Chicago, and $79 to $99 fares to Orlando, Providence, R.I., the Southwest and West Coast are popular with Tennesseans traveling to different parts of the country.

“In my personal opinion—and I believe in the opinion of our (airport) board—we are better off. We have some of the lowest fares in the country, with Southwest and Frontier,” said Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority President and CEO Raul Regalado.

“We have a tradeoff. We’ve given up some direct flights that American used to offer during its hub days. But the airport developed a number of facilities—the terminal and runways—for them. When they de-hubbed, those facilities remained. American continues to pay for some. But we’ve been able to accommodate other airlines because we have those facilities available.

Memphis would likely be more insulated from the loss of its Northwest hub, as Northwest’s operation pale in comparison to the activity at the FedEx superhub. However, I’m inclined to agree that city residents and businesses might fare better (no pun intended) by trading a near-monopolistic hub for a competitive market.

Heck, it might even become affordable for me to fly back home, rather than looking at flying into either Little Rock or Nashville, and then driving the rest of the way.

It’s been talked about for years, both among some Memphians, and among roadgeeks. However, it looks like the idea of a third bridge across the Mississippi River at Memphis might be getting additional attention, judging by this article in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette:

Increased traffic counts over the two Mississippi River bridges in West Memphis and the resulting longer delays for motorists traversing the two spans have local officials studying the possibility of constructing a third interstate bridge.[...]

But it may be the first time that the necessary parties are all on the same page, said Eddie Brawley, director of the West Memphis Planning Organization. [...]

Tentative plans call for installing a bridge at the southern edge of West Memphis, through the city’s industrial park and the river port. The bridge would cross the Mississippi River there and reconnect with Interstate 55 south of President’s Island near downtown Memphis.

Another idea is to build a bridge just north of Marion. The bridge would merge with the northern loop of Interstate 40 in northwest Memphis.

Considering traffic flow in the region, the location of the Ports of Memphis and West Memphis and the assorted truck depots, I’d think the West Memphis - President’s Island alignment. After all, it’s closer to where much of the long-haul trucking in the area is destined for, and it probably provides the greatest relief from the bottleneck on the east end of the I-55 bridge—the cloverleaf interchange connecting I-55 through southwestern Memphis with the bridge itself.

I’ve been meaning to writes something from my soapbox about the water situation in metro Atlanta, where poor planning appears to have lead to the region having less than a 3 months’ supply of easily accessible water, and less than 9 months’ of any water at current usage rates, triggering an old-west water rights squabble among the states of Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and environmental advocates acting on behalf of an endangered mussel.

However, considering the size and magnitude of the mess, I haven’t really been able to think of anything too insightful to add to the noise.

However, there is an article in the Charlotte Observer about the water woes of Orme, Tennessee that did catch my eye.

The situation in Orme has deteriorated to the point where the town trucks in water thrice weekly, and water is provided to residents’ homes only three hours a day. However, there is a solution on the horizon:

The town has received a $377,590 emergency grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that Reames hopes will be Orme’s salvation. A utility crew is laying a 2 1/2-mile pipe to connect Orme to the Bridgeport, Ala., water supply. The work could be finished by Thanksgiving.

The image of guerrilla water department folks, quickly and surreptitiously running piping from Birmingham, Nashville, and Charlotte to connect into Atlanta’s water mains just flashed through my brain.