Tyler McCreary, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Geography at Florida State University, co-authored an article in the journal The Southeastern Geographer titled “To Court Without the Corps? The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Florida v. Georgia” alongside Frank Schmitz, Ph.D. Below is a summary of the article written by doctoral student Martin Gandur (Ph.D. Political Science’ 25).
In “To Court Without the Corps? The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Florida v. Georgia,” Tyler McCreary, Ph.D., and Frank Schmitz, Ph.D., examine the role of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a recent Supreme Court case about water allocation in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river basin.

The authors review the arguments and findings from the US Supreme Court decision “Florida v. Georgia.” This judicial case began with allegations of ecological damage due to upstream water overconsumption in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river basin. However, the case ultimately revolved around the technical practices and regulation manuals of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who operates the system of federal dams that impacts the flow of the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers. Dr. McCreary and Dr. Schmitz examine the evidence and arguments presented in the Florida v. Georgia case and argue that the ecological disturbances and damages occurred in the Apalachicola watershed cannot be understood nor remedied without considering the history and management practices of the Corps in the ACF basin.
The authors’ analysis of the Florida v. Georgia case highlights the importance to water governance of the policies, technical practices, and production of knowledge by engineers and other experts. More generally, the authors’ article suggest that Florida v. Georgia is a more general invitation for geographers to develop political ecologies that critically engage with the practices of engineers and experts in other transboundary river basins.
The legal case the authors study has its origins in 2012, when Florida’s Apalachicola Bay oyster industry collapsed in the middle of one of the worst droughts recorded in the southeastern United States. According to the Florida government, excessive salinity, caused by low freshwater flows from the Apalachicola River, devastated the intertidal oyster reefs. Since the Apalachicola River is formed by the convergence of the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers, Florida alleged that low flows in the Apalachicola must be the downstream results of upstream overconsumption, especially from the Atlanta metropolitan area in the Chattahoochee headwaters and agricultural withdrawals along the Flint River of southern Georgia. Florida then sued Georgia, attempting to cap its water consumption and increase the volume of water sent downstream, under the goal of protecting the estuary and community of Apalachicola from the impacts of increasing water consumption in Georgia.
Importantly, the authors describe the most salient feature of the Florida v. Georgia case was Florida’s attempt to exclude the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from the litigation. The Corps had been involved in previous legal conflicts between Florida and Georgia, since the Corps operates a system of five dams regulating the flow regime of the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers. Specifically, the Corps maintains the reservoir forming Lake Lanier in northern Georgia, which provides much of the water supply for the metro-Atlanta region, and the Jim Woodruff Dam, which regulates flows from the confluence of the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers into the Apalachicola. By excluding the Corps from the litigation, Florida focused instead on the failure of Georgia to effectively regulate water consumption on not only the Chattahoochee but also the Flint River, which has a series of smaller hydropower dams but no large federal storage dams. The authors explain that, rather than negotiating with complex technicalities of water agreements between local authorities and the Corps, the Florida government highlighted the ecological and economic stakes of the conflict for downstream estuarian communities in Apalachicola Bay.
Ultimately, despite Florida’s efforts, the authors show that the US Supreme Court decided that the causes of ecological damages in Florida could not be traced directly to Georgia’s consumption, since the evidence suggests there are other relevant factors, including the actions of the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Through their analysis of the Florida v. Georgia case, the authors suggest that geography and political ecology provides useful insights for future research in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint basin. Also, the authors note that Florida v. Georgia can invites to rethink the role of engineers within the political ecologies of other US transboundary water disputes.
To read the full report, click here. To learn more about the FSU Department of Geography, visit coss.fsu.edu/geography.
APA Citation:
Schmitz, F., & McCreary, T. (2022). To Court Without the Corps? The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Florida v. Georgia. Southeastern Geographer 62(4), 298-317.
https://doi.org/10.1353/sgo.2022.0035.