Farmers in southwest Georgia will be able to apply for new or expanded permits to pump water from the Floridan Aquifer to irrigate their crops starting April 1.
They’ve been cut off from the vast, water-filled cave network that underlies the southeast corner of the U.S. since 2012, when a two-year drought dried up rivers that flowed through Florida, Georgia and Alabama.
The Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin was a key site in the decades-long “Water Wars” during which the three states accused each other of mismanagement of their shared water resources…