The Southern Highland Reader

For those of us who’ve spent our lives in these mountains, it’s hard to wrap our imaginations around the idea of water shortages. Memories of summers prior to the mid-nineties include regular afternoon thundershowers, and regular large, wet storm systems from the Gulf of Mexico year around.

I admit my evidence above is circumstantial, but the rock-hard dryness of the past decade – whatever the cause – is fact, and now people in poorly-planned communities with sketchy water supplies are starting to feel a pinch.

There has been strong coverage lately of the woes of Southwestern US residents. They’re building cities where there is no water, and now are scrambling to address the issue. A good overview can be found here.

We’ve had a little relief lately, but the drought persists, and Atlanta’s much-publicized nervousness about its supply is manifesting itself in odd ways. Across the AP wire today comes a piece about a centuries-old border disagreement between Tennessee and Georgia. Seems that when the boundaries were surveyed, the line was placed a couple of miles too far south.

If the maps were re-drawn, Georgia would have a chunk of Chattanooga. More significantly, though, the peach state would contain the headwaters of the Little Tennessee River. If this sounds like a joke to you, you’re not alone. But they are, at least partially, serious.

More holdings-forth on this from the Chattanooga Times Free Press here, here and here.

POSTSCRIPT 4.6.08

We see by way of the AP wire that North Carolina and South Carolina are methodically re-surveying their border to “within a centimeter,” from Ellicott’s Rock (where, NC, SC and GA meet), to the sea. Most of the border, the story reports, hasn’t been checked since at least 1815. The original surveying was rudimentary, of course, and occasionally off the mark. There are no significant border disputes between these states, but much of the border is the same that was surveyed by Ellicott in 1811 and is the one in dispute in the Georgia/Tennessee ruckus.

Tags: Associated Press, Chattanooga, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee

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5. NC water conservation bill passes

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