Water rights up for debate
Judge rules Durango owners can peddle groundwater
July 26, 2005
By AMY HORTON CARTER
The Brunswick News
Georgia environmental regulators and conservationists are
protesting an order by a federal bankruptcy judge that will allow owners
of the defunct Durango Georgia paper mill in St. Marys to auction their
water rights to the highest bidder.
"Our basis for our position is Georgia law," said Julie
Mayfield, spokeswoman for the Georgia Water Coalition, an alliance of
121 environmental groups concerned with water conservation.
"We differ with the (bankruptcy) trustee's lawyer in this.
He has been very clear that Durango owns the water under that land. That
is a very clear misstatement, a misrepresentation of the law," Mayfield
said. "It's just a simple fact that in Georgia nobody owns the water
that runs under or through their land. The public owns it, and the state
manages it for all of us."
Federal Bankruptcy Judge Lamar W. Davis Jr. is allowing the
trustee overseeing Durango's Chapter 11 business bankruptcy case -
Bridge Associates - to auction off the assets of the mill in December to
satisfy various debtors' claims. The mill closed in November 2002.
Counted among those assets are Durango's "water rights," in
the form of a state permit that allowed the mill to pump up to 44
million gallons of groundwater per day from the Floridan aquifer. The
judge's order divides the total allocation of groundwater into 44 lots
of 1 million gallons each and would allow all to be sold separately from
the mill property itself.
State Sen. Jeff Chapman, R-Brunswick, said that provision of
the auction could allow groundwater pumped in Georgia to be shipped off
elsewhere, contrary to state law. Chapman, who serves on the Sound
Science Initiative that is exploring alternative water sources to ease
saltwater intrusion issues in the Floridan, said the pending sale will
be a topic of discussion for the group.
"That is not an asset that is for sale," Chapman said. "That
belongs to the people of Georgia, and through the state regulatory
process, it is permitted out to meet the needs of people and industry.
It is not an asset that we just put on the chopping block and sell to
the highest bidder."
In a May 25 memorandum addressed to "various interested
parties," Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch warned
potential buyers to talk with the agency before bidding on the water rights.
"The Durango Paper Co. water withdrawal permit was issued
for withdrawal of a specific amount of water for a specific purpose at a
specific location," Couch said in her memo. "The specific purpose was
for consumptive use as process water for pulp and paper manufacturing."
Ward Stone Jr., a Macon attorney representing Durango's
bankruptcy trustee, disagrees.
"We do believe that groundwater is owned by landowners, not
by the state," Stone said.
That is why Durango's water rights, according to Stone, are
legally considered assets subject to sale by the bankruptcy court.
Stone said the bankruptcy trustee also believes the state
has a legal right to impose reasonable regulations on the use of
groundwater. Consequently, the EPD will ultimately have final say over
how the auctioned water rights are used, Stone said.
"Basically what we have said is that under bankruptcy laws
we can offer up these water permits for sale and we can then approach
the EPD and request that the EPD reallocate water permits per the sale,"
Stone said, "and the final reallocation of the permits or confirmation
of the reallocations would be subject to valid EPD regulations."
State Rep. Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons Island, takes comfort
from the fact that groundwater withdrawal rights cannot be legally
transferred without EPD approval.
"It is my understanding that EPD still has to approve any
permit issues for those water rights. They simply cannot sell the water
rights to anyone for any purpose before any permitting can take place,"
Keen said. "EPD has to review whatever the user's intent and volume
would be and then they would have to approve it."
|
