A great song by the Doobie Brothers.
There's been a lot of talk about water here in Georgia lately. If you're stateside and pay attention to the news, you know how bad the drought is in this part of the country. Now the good folks at our state legislature have hit on a plan to bring more water into the state.
They want to annex part of Tennessee.
Not much of it, just a little slice of the Tennessee River and most of Chattanooga with it.
According to the sponsors of a bill that would redraw the state line, the state line was never drawn correctly in the first place. Apparently, back in 1818, a surveyor mis-marked where the line should be because he was using nautical equipment to do the survey. Supporters of the "redraw" plan also have said there were forest fires, and he was being harassed by Native Americans while trying to figure out where the state line was.
The bill has now cleared the state senate unanimously, and the state house is lookng at a similar bill that would encourage a resurveying of the line.
Of course, Congress has to approve any moving of the state line, and I'm pretty sure Tennessee isn't going to go along with this.
I do find it amusing, though, since that whole area is where my in-laws live. Folks up there have been joking about a new "civil war". If I was living in Chattanooga, my biggest gripe in moving to Georgia would be about having to pay state income taxes, since Tennessee doesn't have them. I honestly can't wait to see what happens with this. Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee have been duking it out for a while over water sharing, since all three states are suffering from the drought. But there's no doubt that Atlanta, with it's huge population, is definitely in dire straits, if they had any water to make a strait. I can't help but imagining little "water militias" popping up all along the state lines. Alabama already has a group that calls itself the Alabama Minutemen, although they're primarily concerned with illegal immigrants right now. I'm sure they'd be up for defending a river, though.
Lawmakers in Tennessee are questioning the sudden desire to correct a two-hundred year old mistake, but Georgia lawmakers claim they've been protesting this for years and nothing has been done about it. I think they may have to protest for another two hundred years before that thing gets changed.
By the way, the picture is a Thomas Nast Harpers Weekly illustration of the Battle of Lookout Mountain, which is in Chattanooga. I got it from this site: www.sonofthesouth.net It's a great site that has many Civil War era images, and despite the name, has some Union stuff, too. If you like history, please check it out.
