Georgia Belatedly Adopts Water Plan

Other states, take notice.

Georgia, which along with neighbors in the Southeast is in the midst of an historic drought, adopted a framework that will direct future population growth into areas that have water enough to sustain it, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The lesson every other state, county and city can take from this: Don't wait til it's a crisis.

Georgia has been criticized, from experts within the state, for failing to reign in suburban sprawl as it careened into the countryside. One of the problems with that unplanned sprawl is that when a drought set in, the water supplies shrank, exacerbating tensions between Georgia, Alabama and Florida over the use of common water resources.

Those tensions are only likely to increase over time. Some global warming forecasts predict a persistent and worsening drought across the American south that could lead to desert conditions and, ultimately, mass migrations.

If you listen, those experts are probably speaking in every state in the nation, certainly in any that is experiencing rapid population growth. The trick is to listen to them before the water dries up, so that when it does – and it will, inevitably if not permanently – people and wildlife suffer less.

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