On July 21, 2010, US District Court Judge Paul A. Magnuson denied all parties except for the federal Defendants’ in the Tri-State water rights litigation Motion for Summary Judgment in Phase II of the 20-year-old court battle.
In Phase I, the litigation involved challenges to the US Army Corps of Engineers operations at the northernmost dam and reservoir in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basin.
In Phase II, Magnuson evaluated the actions of the Corps in light of the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and other similar statutes.
Additionally, Phase II challenged those operations at the southernmost dam in the system, the Jim Woodruff Dam, which is located on the Apalachicola River at the border of Georgia and Florida.
Magnuson dismissed all claims raised in Phase II as being moot because of his Phase I findings and order, which gave the Corps 3-years to obtain congressional authorization for the operational changes requested by the Metro-Atlanta area to Buford Dam.
At the end of the three-year period, without Congressional approval or some other resolution, the level of water withdrawn from the dam would return to the baseline levels of mid-1970.
In his 26-page ruling yesterday, Magnuson cautioned the Corps telling them that their refusals to comply with their statutory duties cannot be avoided merely by pleading prudential mootness.
Magnuson also wrote that the Court, or future courts when considering the Corps’s actions, would look favorably on the Corps’s stubborn insistence on excluding from its analysis all reasonable alternatives in the ACF basin.
The judge encouraged all the parties to work together toward an analysis that will advance the ultimate resolution of the litigation.
The governmental parties involved in Phase II included the states of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia; the cities of Atlanta, Columbus, and Gainesville, Georgia; the Georgia counties of Gwinnett, DeKalb, and Fulton; the US Fish and Wildlife Service; and the Army Corps of Engineers.
The only government within the State of Florida to join the litigation was the City of Apalachicola.
In Phase I, the litigation involved challenges to the US Army Corps of Engineers operations at the northernmost dam and reservoir in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river basin.
In Phase II, Magnuson evaluated the actions of the Corps in light of the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and other similar statutes.
Additionally, Phase II challenged those operations at the southernmost dam in the system, the Jim Woodruff Dam, which is located on the Apalachicola River at the border of Georgia and Florida.
Magnuson dismissed all claims raised in Phase II as being moot because of his Phase I findings and order, which gave the Corps 3-years to obtain congressional authorization for the operational changes requested by the Metro-Atlanta area to Buford Dam.
At the end of the three-year period, without Congressional approval or some other resolution, the level of water withdrawn from the dam would return to the baseline levels of mid-1970.
In his 26-page ruling yesterday, Magnuson cautioned the Corps telling them that their refusals to comply with their statutory duties cannot be avoided merely by pleading prudential mootness.
Magnuson also wrote that the Court, or future courts when considering the Corps’s actions, would look favorably on the Corps’s stubborn insistence on excluding from its analysis all reasonable alternatives in the ACF basin.
The judge encouraged all the parties to work together toward an analysis that will advance the ultimate resolution of the litigation.
The governmental parties involved in Phase II included the states of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia; the cities of Atlanta, Columbus, and Gainesville, Georgia; the Georgia counties of Gwinnett, DeKalb, and Fulton; the US Fish and Wildlife Service; and the Army Corps of Engineers.
The only government within the State of Florida to join the litigation was the City of Apalachicola.
No comments:
Post a Comment