TALLAHASSEE — After years of legal battling, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously rejected a lawsuit in which Florida argued Georgia has used too much water in a river system shared by the states and destroyed Apalachicola Bay’s oyster industry.
The ruling dismissed the lawsuit that Florida filed in 2013 after oystering collapsed in the Franklin County bay located in the Panhandle. Florida contended that Georgia drew too much water in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system, which starts in northern Georgia and ends in Apalachicola Bay, and that more water should be directed to Florida.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in Thursday’s ruling that Florida did not prove Georgia’s water use had caused damage to the bay and the Apalachicola River. The ruling upheld a recommendation from a special master, who was appointed by the Supreme Court and sided with Georgia in a December 2019 recommendation.
“Of course, the precise causes of the bay’s oyster collapse remain a subject of ongoing scientific debate,” Barrett wrote. “As judges, we lack the expertise to settle that debate and do not purport to do so here. Our more limited task is to evaluate the parties’ arguments in light of the record evidence and Florida’s heavy burden of proof. And on this record, we agree with the special master that Florida has failed to carry its burden.”
Florida contended that Georgia farmers have used too much water to irrigate crops, causing downstream damage to the Apalachicola River and the bay. But Georgia argued, in part, that the oyster industry sustained damage because of overharvesting after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster sent oil spreading through the Gulf of Mexico.
The Supreme Court ruling pointed to overharvesting as a key factor undercutting Florida’s arguments.
“Florida’s own documents and witnesses reveal that Florida allowed unprecedented levels of oyster harvesting in the years before the collapse,” Barrett wrote.
Florida officials recently banned oyster harvesting from the bay for up to five years to give wild oyster reefs time to regenerate.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried called the court ruling “disappointing.”
“The Supreme Court’s ruling is disappointing for the thousands of families whose livelihoods depend on the waters of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochie-Flint River Basin,” she said in a statement. “The Court may have disagreed, but the hardworking Floridians of our oyster fisheries know that water overconsumption by Georgia has contributed to a 98 percent decline in value of Florida’s oyster catch.”
While Florida filed the lawsuit in 2013, battles about water in the river system date to the 1990s. Florida sought in the lawsuit what is known as an “equitable apportionment” of water, which could have led to new limits on water used by Georgia farmers.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in February, after Special Master Paul Kelly, a New Mexico-based appellate judge, issued his 81-page recommendation in 2019 that supported Georgia.
Kelly was appointed special master after a divided Supreme Court overturned a 2017 recommendation by another special master, Ralph Lancaster, who said Florida had not proven its case “by clear and convincing evidence” that imposing a cap on Georgia’s water use would benefit the Apalachicola River.
