(CN) – Georgia lawmakers reignited a simmering feud with Tennessee by recently approving a resolution that would establish a commission to convince the Volunteer State to give up a one-mile strip of land so it can access the Tennessee River.
Georgia says the discrepancy has stood for 200 years. According to the resolution passed in February by the Georgia House of Representatives, the state originally agreed to have its border drawn at the 35th parallel, which would have placed the line where Georgia could access the Tennessee River.
But the surveyors in the original 1818 land survey missed the mark. The bank of Nickajack Lake, which is fed by the river, barely skates by Georgia’s northwest corner.
So the Peach State is trying once again to move the border slightly north so that it can access water flowing along the Tennessee River, according to the resolution’s sponsor, Georgia State Representative Marc Morris.
Lawmakers believe a pipeline from the river to Atlanta would help address the state capital’s water needs. The resolution proposes a joint boundary line commission involving Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina.
If the unlikely effort succeeds, many Tennesseans would be faced with the possibility of having to switch driver’s licenses, vote in different polling places and pay Georgia’s income taxes.
Northern Georgia is part of a watershed that feeds about half a billion gallons of water a day into the Tennessee River, according to Morris. The state wants to recoup some of that natural resource which is flowing downstream, eventually emptying into the Gulf of Mexico.
Morris represents Cumming, Ga., which sits on the border of Lake Lanier, Atlanta’s main water supply. He said Georgia and the federal government never ratified the border, although Tennessee agreed to it.
“So it’s almost like open legislation that has been laying out there that has never been finished,” Morris said in a phone interview.
So far, Georgia’s efforts have been rebuffed.
At one point, Georgia sought to buy some of the water out of the Tennessee River, but the Volunteer State responded by passing a law forbidding interbasin transfers, according to Morris.
Morris said that by creating the commission – which would be abolished on Dec. 1 of this year – George, Tennessee and North Carolina can sit down and work out an agreement without relying on a court wading in.
“If parties typically don’t want to talk when there’s an issue, then they end up in court,” Morris said. “I’d much rather not see that. Look, Tennessee’s been great friends for forever. They’re the Volunteer State; they’re the folks that show up. And I know the honest, hardworking people of Tennessee would never want to take anything that didn’t belong to them.”
A decade ago, the neighborly dispute heated up.
It started with Bart Crattie’s October 2007 article in The Atlanta-Journal Constitution. The Chattanooga-area surveyor, who is secretary of the Surveyors Historical Society, penned a piece pointing out that the state border is not where it should have been.
The surveyors in 1818 used a less-than-accurate naval sextant as they blazed a line through then-Cherokee territory. Crattie thought it would be an interesting article at a time when Georgia was experiencing a severe drought.