Georgia has until 2012 to find more water.

Metro Atlanta’s water supply will be drastically cut if no solutions are found.

A state water panel has determined that Georgia does not have the time or money to meet a 2012 deadline for finding new water sources for metro Atlanta.
The state’s Water Contingency Task Force says it will take at least eight years and a huge financial investment to find a water replacement for its withdrawals from Lake Lanier, according to Southern Political Report.

U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson imposed the deadline last summer in a legal case stemming from a decades-long water feud among Georgia, Alabama and Florida. Magnuson ruled that Georgia had little legal claim to Lake Lanier — the federal reservoir in northern Georgia that currently supplies must of metro Atlanta’s water.

If the states fail to reach a water agreement by 2012, he ruled, Atlanta’s water withdrawals from Lake Lanier will need to return to levels used in the 1970s, when the metropolitan population was one-third its current size of 5 million residents.

Georgia politicians are fighting the judge’s ruling on multiple fronts. The state is appealing Magnuson’s decision in court while trying to restart negotiations with Alabama and Florida. It is also exploring the possibility of legally reworking Georgia’s northern border with Tennessee, in order to lay claim to the Tennessee River as a water source.

Georgia officials contend that a 1818 survey wrongly located the state’s northern border just short of the Tennessee River.