>>Georgia: There’s been litigation over and Alabama over this River system, the Apalachicola, that has been ongoing is the state’s ability needs get met.

>>Reporter: Florida is suing the state of resources.

>>Chip: 23 years later, I find myself in the of the same issues that were affecting the >>Reporter: The decades long dispute is affecting >>Tommy: It’s been tough to see ya know work.

>>Reporter: Florida has suffered harm from >>Travis: We all depend on it.

What they don't >>Reporter: With all three states having a over water.

>>Shannon: We uh, we didn’t realize how >>Dale: I got so attached to this place when here and then it was all covered in trees.

see today.

But the stories that you would and so Prehistoric peoples, you know, paddled traded with each other, and they would trade Georgia in the mountains and up there you that they have brought from the gulf and traded of commerce.

Well when the United States came along, the European-style nations.

You had the United you had Spain starting at the Florida line.

the free avenue of commerce that it had been.

You've had all these dramatic changes through together and led to alot of the violence that >>Dan: When I got out of college, I went out ran rivers out there for about 10 years, and terribly, I had the opportunity to go to Apalachicola conversancy on the small island of Dog Island.

productivity issues and things that were going what a really unique and productive system It’s about a 19,600 square mile basin so up in the very northern part of Georgia in about 500 miles south to the Gulf of Mexico through, or begins up in the granite Piedmont then it goes into the dority plane, which and then comes into the Apalachicola and drops the Gulf of Mexico.

>>Dale: This is a place that is so rich in knowing the story better, I think a line of one of the real shames of this and of the so much here that people don’t know is here.

Americans in North America at the time it declared that they were free people and they part of the bluff projects out into the river south, you can see for 2 miles down the river.

of the canons here, so for 2 miles if any from this point.

When the battle took place came into range at the far, as far down as American troops and Creek warriors have surrounded have not been able to make even a dent in they’re going to bring the gunboats up.

boats.

They fired 4 just kind of testing the lodge one over behind the fort, and what happened of a pine tree onto the gun powder magazine.

Just gone.

These were people who came here rather than surrender and go back into slavery.

This river basin is full of this type of history.

within a couple of miles of where we stand in the world, and you have all of those kinds U trees further North.

The estuary and the There is so much here that I think we’re been 50 or 60 years ago as it developed.

>>Chip: I grew up, uh just upstream of here which is in the flint river watershed.

Uh, Uh, I went to school in Atlanta.

There are important species that depend on a healthy quality, but in terms of water quantity.

Things shrimp, blue crabs, uh grouper, um even endangered Apalachicola River.

So it’s really important we take care of this river system.

>>Dan: You have a fishing industry that is in-shore in the bay and the estuary, and off-shore obviously they don’t move around much, so salinity of the bay and the productivity of that come in.

>>Shannon: My great granddaddy was a fisherman.

An oysterman.

My dad was a crabber, an oysterman.

the 2000s I considered myself as a commercial when we used to work in the bay, enjoy the river system.

Um, we used to make river trips there, ya know on oyster boats.

5 or 6 oyster do a weekend cruise up Lake Seminole.

Stay to ya know, really enjoy what we had but things having the extra money is hard now.

>>Tommy: I have the 13 Mile oyster house, have a shrimp house, a processing plant, an ya know we do a little bit from start to almost seafood markets and things like that.

My dad family December 1957.

Then, it was primarily shrimp boats that we unloaded here.

And the which is 13 miles from here and uh, my dad it just grew from there.

>>Travis: I’ve been fishing since I was The water wars has uh, really affected us We uh, feel the hurt more so than any of us >>Shannon: When we started having issues with fresh water is when I started getting involved in jeopardy.

>>Tommy: The oyster industry in Apalachicola my opinion the lack of fresh water has created >>Chip: Um, we know that, that rivering discharge They need that fresh water influx, if the then predators and disease come and really >>Dan: They grow because of the freshwater industry when the river drops down really the phytoplankton crash, the oysters, uh, as they normally do and when the bay gets the bay that actually eat the oysters.

>>Shannon: It’s just not been a fair situation, after, you know?

There’s never a fair on gotta have something to have a survival rate >>Tommy: They’ve gotta come up with some freshwater coming down the river like we used >>Travis: It's a struggle day-by-day to keep been dealt, we're strong, we as a fishery hold the water up there, and they use it like mother nature has allowed us to use.

>>Shannon: I used to have several different boat to work off of.

Um, ya know and it’s life and a way of living.

I mean, these boys up, ya know they want to do what they’re their dad working the bay.

And education wasn’t education because the bay is just not there >>Tommy: People working for me, families, their kids, it’s gone, ya know?

Um, I realize times but ya know you’re doing away with >>Shannon: My income in the 90s was at least I’m hoping to be able to sustain something bay.

It may never be large scale like it was kind of production coming out of the bay, >>Tommy: I love it.

I love the oyster business, a way of life.

>>Tommy: It’s not good, ya know?

Um, ya >>Dan: What you hear about in the news and truly this is a problem, and a serious problem, your oysters, but you’re also losing your in the flood plain your entire forest is thinning it is diminished and just the overall growth flood plain is being diminished.

>>Gary: The Tupelo honey is basically a tree borderlines and the edges of where the water to a lot of different areas.

It is primarily about a 30 mile, 40 mile radius, or stretch >>Randall: My family’s been in it for years real hard when you know there's something figure out what it is to keep them alive.

sugar, it don't ever go bad with the exception tell you that it's a superior honey.

The blooms you know in the low line areas around the to make a bloom that a, or have enough blooms >>Gary: the water and the minerals that the Tupelo honey.

>>Randall: You don’t get the high water the swamps dried up so you don’t, you know, to have moisture and that’s just something the bee business as far as Tupelo goes if hard for the bees to get anything out of the >>Gary: I’ve been in beekeeping roughly any Tupelo honey because of the water levels so it don’t produce a high level bloom which year’s blooming season too.

>>Dan: What you have occurring is a loss of and so that in itself affects the production matter and the nutrients that are carried a tremendous amount of leaf litter when they has historically made up a big part of the So when you start losing that, then the composition live in the soil, and so what’s getting only are you harming the bay with that lack to some degree the nutrients, you’re going industry that the Apalachicola Basin has thrived >>Randall: You have people who rely on the the guys that do the shrimping, the guys that river, deadhead loggers, bee keepers, people but tourism, without our flourishing economy like that around the river, that’s gonna >>Gary: This town here in particular has depended that have been in this business for over 100 out of the small town, well now we depend we should be able to produce that here and >>Randall: 20 years ago, you probably had than you have now.

Technically it shouldn’t It should be growing.

>>Gary: When you take away our ability to to the ones that live in it and depend on food product, you know, a source for your those tremendously.

>>Randall: As someone who’s been in it his up in Georgia and all these people, you know, a lot more predominant.

There’s a lot more water that used to come down the river it used up on irrigation, it’s used up on cattle, that keeps the water from reaching this are the swamp, and you rob the water from the you know.

Something’s gonna change for sure, of generating electricity and things like a lot more need of electrical consumption fluctuation in the river height.

Never just years.

It don’t do that anymore.

Might come it’s back on dry again.

I think it’s gonna community, the people on the river to come gonna work, because no one person is gonna And without bees, there ain’t gonna be food.

notch on the ladder of honey and even honey to have as human beings, but we have to have >>Bashears: Apalachicola River has been such I was a kid.

So, I’ve been going over to since I was knee high and the river is such in many different aspects.

Um, whats been is how our population’s grown and how the river tends to swell and it supports everything forward to 2017 and the one thing that is over there, the part of everyone’s living >>Montford: My great-great grandmother/grandfather 19th Century, and so my family has deep deep from the river.

I used to live on river street been right here for generations.

It's just, seen the Apalachicola River first, the first it like yourself, you see how beautiful it generations have a very very special love >>Georgia: I owned and operated a kayak business people out here, I really enjoy being on the It’s one of my favorite, favorite, all-time paddled down the river, did the full length, group, which is a campaign of Apalachicola river from top to bottom so to speak.

It was I say that because I help coordinate rivertruck but every year we take a group of paddlers spend five days out there paddling and at back and say ‘oh that was a life-changing ‘cause I had that life-changing experience to actually connect and experience and be to speak from all the technology of the world me become really in love with the Apalachicola why we need to protect it.

>>Chip: One of the issues that’s of particular and water usage, is this notion of the green Spring time, under natural flood conditions, of nutrient rich water offshore, and that, shelf edge mesophotic reefs.

And that habitat valuable grouper species, several of them conditions are favorable, and if the timing such a time to coincide with that phytoplankton And when you have that match of those two a really strong year clasp that year.

They’ll to eat sort of thing.

>>Georgia: In the 40s, in the 1940s, across of what was happening, we-planners, designers, time harnessing mother nature’s power if where a lot of dams were planned and reservoirs rage and we disrupted entire river systems as well, so now we have numerous reservoirs, a complete and flowing river system of a connected interrupted all along its path so there’s way and that’s gonna affect aquatic habitat, on a river change when you put in bridges seeing is the worse part of that so again it to the Apalachicola Bay.

>>Bashears: the genesis of the “Water Wars” um, they have, their water needs have increased up there to keep it very simple.

And as the drinking water source.

They continue to dam The consequence of that, is down river they’re Georgia, and Florida have been in these Water >>Montford: What, when we're talking about is focus on Atlanta holding the water, which if you will, because what you have to do, is balance the needs with the resources so share and have an adequate amount of water.

that, the corps has not done that.

They have for development purposes.

And we know people time our natural resources must have water a better job of planning, a better job of downstream.

It's really, it's a lack of flow >>Dan: The Corps of Engineers was authorized 5 federal reservoirs primarily on the Chattahoochee confluence of the Flint and the Chattahoochee When they want more water to get down river from all the way up at the top of the Chattahoochee >>Gordon: One day my dad asked me, now this literally said “what’s wrong with the You know it depends on your point of view, water, those are good things.

Um, you can, and do some flood control.

You can’t eliminate enhance property values, you can create a but dad, when you dam it, it is no longer changing it from a flowing water system to And so the values and functions of that particular when you do that.

The problems in the Flint care about, that support Flint Riverkeeper to Florida and the Apalachicola.

Literally, the Flint watershed, you’re in the Apalachicola sitting in.

But, the sub-water shed is the >>Chip: it’s a stochastic effect naturally.

you don’t.

And when you add on the additional valve of that flow coming down, it puts a, river discharge with the spawning event of don’t match, of if they don’t happen at times you have a collapse of that particular and there’s no blooming phytoplankton and larval fishes have nothing to eat.

And um, continue the population as it should be.

>>Georgia: I think when the oyster decline a lot of people started noticing “well what’s they’re not Apalachicola oysters.” And understand necessarily how fresh water flow people are very familiar with with Apalachicola time at St.

George Island and so Franklin economy with people coming in and enjoying that with the oyster decline, it was pretty attention.

>>Gordon: This isn’t all about oysters.

also about shrimp, crabs, redfish, trout, gar fish that nobody has respect for.

I mean, opportunity to fix that and in a river with to tune that estuary back towards something not taken that opportunity.

We’ve done just >>Georgia: As we know, the big challenge for water flows.

So there are 15-17 dams and reservoirs system.

And the Woodruff Dam, which is behind back what is now Lake Seminole, is where that the dam, comes down stream.

>>Gordon: And then there are storage reservoirs we have 3, I think it is 3, that are designated And those 2 are Lake Lanier and West Point.

dictates everything that happens downstream Beshears: legally they have maneuvered, Florida or change this.

At the end of the day we’ve thing that was even possible and that was 200 times in the history of the country.

It another state.

>>Georgia: Litigation creates big obstacles I’m suing you, you might not want to talk litigation, people that once were talking that has made it more difficult to participate that after the Supreme Court ruling, best on January 8th, and perhaps the Supreme Court to share the water and this is how I want really great solution.

>>Beshears - State legislature can’t do a federal level.

Because this is all of Georgia, So even in congress, politically, say all many we have, say they all agreed on a bill, that, they would still have to get the other for it to pass.

>>Montford: we have to depend on our Federal to depend on the good graces and good intentions into Florida, Alabama Vs.

Georgia issue, and depend on our Federal officials to do what's loose.

Turn it loose and let it come down that the whole Basin and the Bay needs.

>>Dan: The freshwater is the driver of the don’t really have the capacity to hold a can modify or moderate the release of the the flow.

And that timing of how the ecosystem functions is critical to how the entire ecology >>Chip: Not only is it necessary to ensure the Apalachicola bay, but the pulsing of this phenomenon is also important.

Um we, we like that, that comes down the river, but when contained within a channel, but under flood floods the, the uh surrounding forest, the the water kind of scourers those floodplains, like that, back into the river channel.

The far offshore, on these mesophotic reefs.

And a nice phytoplankton and zooplankton bloom, important grouper species that our local economy >>Dan: You have the phytoplankton, the nutrients, of that comes together and that’s where the bay.

And as that supports the whole food saltier parts of the bay in the gulf.

>>Dan: So you have that whole ecosystem going out in the Gulf have spent part of their lifecycle and mature they move on off shore, and what and fresh water will also go out into the the habitat for the mature species off-shore, So, you have the ecosystem literally begins where you have a totally different ecosystem, all the way through this ecosystem out into >>Georgia: How we share water in future years, of our time as we deal with climate change systems across the nation that’s gonna be Water is a natural resource, it’s not a planet.

A lot of people don’t know that.

I was at a class and I learned that, ‘oh abundant, it’s not everywhere, I can’t the planet, it’s the same water being recirculated, >>Gordon: It’s not just the Flint, it’s the Apalachicola and its Bay.

This is a really or it doesn’t, you know as the case may broken.

But we can fix this and get it functioning committed his war crimes, and ran all of the not trying to get it back to that, we’re equitable.

You know, something that actually As opposed to just working really well for >>Georgia: There is a water management or stakeholders group.

The Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint collaboratively saying we know we can share that equitably.

We know there’s enough water require sacrifices on everybody’s part?

it could be done.

>>Gordon: It’s a group of people of 56-member that was organized not quite 10 years ago as a 501 C3 nonprofit, and it was established to share water among all the different user system without litigation.

Now litigation it has made the ACF stakeholder process more has been perusing the litigation.

It’s, >>Dan: The outcome of that over about 7 years that we raised privately was the development the ACF Basin, and this a plan that we had members in the ACF stakeholders.

>>Gordon: It is a template that is designed ACF Basin in a better way, and that includes includes the way the Army Corps of engineers and those two, those are two mules that have have conservation, then the way the corps have a limited amount of water to work with.

conservation in the world is not gonna change released from woodruff dam during drought >>Dan: The way we got consensus around the so if you pick and choose stuff that will thing the other person helped, you would defeat document.

But it is, it has some great recommendations whether you’re a water manager or a fisheries a cohesive starting point for the states to and it’ll help everybody’.

>>Gordon: Everybody that’s in the ACF system and how they manage those dams on the Chattahoochee, and the Chattahoochee simultaneously.

I guess it’s about half a mile below or downstream That’s all buried in Lake Seminole.

But and every river system on the planet is the is different.

What’s the same about them from the sky or from the ground or both, but or snowfall amounts, their geologies and how When we first started talking with folks in the table from me would get so mad and irritated like it was a dirty word to talk about restoring where it is.

I’m like ‘no ma’am, no because it is in the toilet, I mean, this with the Corps or with the flow itself.

We better in terms of flows and also in this the Corps operations amps it up even more >>Chip: I’ve gone on and worked in different Florida, which is right next door to the Apalachicola many of these same exact issues, particularly an undergraduate 23 years ago.

Um, I sincerely of these issues and make sure that all three, the river and maintain a good healthy ecosystem.

>>Bashir: If you leave Mother Nature be, she’ll the ebbs and flows, it’s when we start interfering you see this.

Uh, man is the one that interrupts so here it is once again, that’s exactly of it is us… it’s us as human beings.

>>Randall: Things have got change, you know, together and want to see it get better otherwise just gonna get worse.

>>Georgia: So we have to keep talking to each collaboratively and recognize that, yeah we and let’s agree to do it and make it happen- self-imposed tougher watering practices and what they need to do to make their personal water, by using best management practices types of practices and growing those could >>Gordon: Let’s be solution oriented.

If about how we can conserve and help ourselves, help our neighbors.

That’s the way I see have to lose.

The Lake Lanier marine industry and all of metro Atlanta don’t have to lose lose.

Everybody can actually benefit and share 2 ½ of 3 year section of the drought.

But This is not Georgia versus Florida in a football and you go into overtime if it’s a tie.

water in this system to share properly.

>>Dan: The Apalachicola River and the whole a place that’s kind of in a step at a time that we normally see on rivers.

The bay is whole northern hemisphere.

And you can travel that but have been decimated by development for me an opportunity for me to try to protect is such a cool place on Earth.

>>Georgia: Writing to your elected officials, So letting folks know that you care about servants to help us protect it is very powerful.

folks sign up for our newsletter, get on our can all elarn as much as we’re comfortable help protect this really magical place.

We’ve of protecting water and doing right by the to protect and working with people who really things that we do.

I like to encourage people make them feel like we can’t make a difference of what keeps me going in a volunteer capacity and be heard and come out and play and learn >>Montford: Some, who may not know much about know it is a pristine area.

There is no other different plants and animals, it's just amazing, >>Dale: Florida has difficult times ahead, our past a little bit to see where we've had are special, and why the Apalachicola is such Biscayne and the big Cypress in the Everglades just natural history but cultural history.

>>Shannon: You’ve got to respect what you trying to make a living in the industry.

>>Tommy: Whats not to love about being around out of my office.

And getting a good premium take home to their family to eat.

I mean, a dozen oysters, or if its having the family oysters and shrimp, ya know, um I enjoy selling to sell a lot of oysters to a lot of people Apalachicola oysters are world famous, they to them, when you get the mix of salt and know, without a lot of the pollutions that have oysters.

Ya know you don’t have the the bay, ya know and it’s just a good way