A water rights claim by the US government at Georgia’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is a rare and possibly unprecedented move east of the Mississippi River to block development outside federal lands.
The move awakens “dormant” water rights that the federal government has never asserted on the East Coast because the region is historically too wet to need to exercise them at public lands and military bases, said Georgia State University law professor Ryan Rowberry.
“It’s saying when states decide to act, if they are going to compromise the quantity of water flowing into federal reservations, they are going to ...