A water war is quietly brewing among three Southeastern states, and its outcome could affect water supply in Fayette and Coweta counties.

Water officials in both counties are busily planning projects to ensure that residents, businesses and industry have plenty of quality water for future needs, but local planning can't take place in a vacuum... not anymore.

Georgia, Alabama and Florida are engaged in complex negotiations over the future of three rivers the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint and local water needs are intricately tied into any agreement that affects the three.

Fayette's primary water sources, local creeks, are part of an extensive system of tributaries that feed the Flint, but water officials agree that there is simply not enough water in local tributaries to supply all the county's needs. The Chattahoochee, through purchases from the city of Atlanta, is the county's backup water source.

Officials say it's too soon to tell whether Fayette and Coweta will be strapped for water as a result of the tri-state negotiations, but they are paying close attention.

When it comes to drinking water, the ultimate questions relate to quality and quantity. One is meaningless without the other.

Headlines like "River in Peril" and "The Water Wars" leap off the front pages of newspapers up and down the beleaguered Chattahoochee. Television evening news shows regularly feature reporters in boots and rubber gloves warning fishermen not to eat what they pull out of that river's waters.

Every minimally informed Georgian is aware that the "Hooch" ranks among the nation's most polluted rivers. In a year when regional promoters sought to have Georgia's largest homegrown waterway declared an American Heritage River, it made another list instead, for the second time: Most Endangered, seventh on a list of 20 compiled by American Rivers, a national conservation group.

Ironically, the Chattahoochee is not only among the most abused waterways in North America, but it is also one of the most used. At 20,400 square miles, the Chattahoochee River basin is the smallest in the country to supply drinking water to a major metropolitan area, quenching the thirst of nearly 3 million people, including 50 percent of all Georgians.

It is the most heavily used water resource in Georgia, providing more than 300 million gallons per day of metro Atlanta's drinking water alone.

About 70 percent of that is returned to the river as waste material.

Recent moves by Georgia's General Assembly, the Fulton County Commission and the Atlanta Regional Commission may be the first baby-steps toward leading a very sick patient back to health. The federal Environmental Protection Agency may even wade in with measures to reduce pollution and provide funds to clean up some of the worst sediment sites.

So, taking the optimistic view that the river will remain a viable source of clean-enough water for Georgians, the next question to address is quantity.

A river does not grow to keep up with the burgeoning population that draws from it. On the contrary, its flow diminishes as construction-siltation clogs it, impoundments divert it, and human demands increase with population growth.

In the case of the Chattahoochee, 14 dams interrupt the river's flow, nearly all for generation of electric power. The demand for agricultural irrigation varies somewhat according to weather and climate changes, but is generally growing.

Without doubt, however, population increases driving both industrial and household use will have the greatest impact on the Chattahoochee basin, which includes the Apalachicola and Flint rivers. The number of Georgians who use the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint basin is projected to increase nearly 25 percent in 25 years, and will do so again in the quarter century after that.

And the Chattahoochee, Apalachicola and Flint are not getting any bigger.

If this were Georgia's problem alone, and if it were Georgia's only water problem, it would be a tough enough challenge for planners and decision makers. But there are two banks to the Chattahoochee, and the other forms a large part of Georgia's border with Alabama.

And then there's Florida, through which the Hooch's water flows via Lake Seminole and the Apalachicola to the major fishing and shellfishing grounds of Apalachicola Bay. Whatever happens to quality upstream, or whatever reduces flows upstream, Florida is affected too.

From this conundrum was born the concept of a compact among the three states, the first such alliance since the enactment of important federal environmental laws like the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. Specifying water allocations by numbers or formulas, and providing for federal monitoring, the compact must be ratified by all three states by the end of this year or be dissolved.

A superficial understanding of the complexity of the issues may be approached by naming just a few of the factors involved:

Quality: Perhaps the most obvious and certainly the most public problem. Because rivers provide drinking water and carry away waste water not necessarily in that order downstream users are often at the mercy of upstreamers.

Quantity: Adequate water levels must be determined and maintained to allow transportation by barge to continue to provide a cheap alternative to train and trucking. Boaters demand certain lake levels for recreation, although this is less a priority for hydroelectric impoundments.

Dredging: A nine-foot-deep channel is required for commercial traffic, but maintaining it can be disruptive to the biological equilibrium of the river.

Wildlife and the seafood industry: The balance of freshwater to salinity is critical for the needs of animal life such as the rich oyster beds in Apalachicola Bay which, of course, are also a staple of g higher prices for water and sewerage, and for electrical power, plus more restrictions on outdoor usage as means of forcing water conservation.

So what does it mean to residents of Fayette and Coweta, these water wars among Florida, Alabama, and Georgia?

Fayette County Water System manager Tony Parrott says he has attended meetings of a board of metro-Atlanta water managers the Atlanta Regional Commission pulled together for input, but does not wish to speculate on how his production might be affected until a final agreement has been reached. He is, however, confident that Georgia's representatives have estimated accurately what the state's needs will be and has them covered.

"The proposals made by the state of Georgia covers the amount of water for a 50-year period," Parrott said, "and future growth is calculated. Until they get to the point in their discussion that we know anything different, I don't know what the answer would be. I do know that Georgia's proposal carries us for the next 50 years."

Asked if Fayette County could not cut itself free from the relatively small amount of water it currently buys from the city of Atlanta, and hence the Chattahoochee, Parrott pointed out that Fayette's other water sources are all part of the ACF basin, and hence are all subject to restrictions both in clean water drawn out and treated waste water released.

For instance Line Creek, expected to provide several million gallons of water when Lake McIntosh is completed in five-ten years, is Coweta County's primary water source as well.

An agreement between the two counties calls for sharing the water 50-50 and release of at least 3 mgd downstream. Thus Fayette's use of water from Lake Mac will be limited, and there will be no possibility of increasing the amount it draws in the future.

And as far as local sources go, that's all she wrote. The creek is the county's last local source, and the Lake McIntosh project will top off Fayette's supply at 30-32 mgd, officials say. If Fayette needs more water than that, it will have to come from the Chattahoochee.

Newnan's city manager Dick Bolin said he doesn't see how the three rivers negotiations will affect Newnan Utilities' water production: "We can't use that water anyway," he said, referring to the Chattahoochee. Newnan Utilities is the supplier for both city and county water customers in Coweta.

The Chattahoochee forms the county line between Coweta and Carroll counties. Bolin said Troup County and the City of LaGrange draw water from West Point Lake, which is formed by a dam across the Hooch, but Coweta does not.

"We would like to use that river, if they ever get it cleaned up," he continued. "We have only Line Creek and White Oak Creek from which to pump [water] into our lakes. We are one of the few counties in Georgia that are impoverished for water."

He said restrictions placed on water drawn from Line Creek and White Oak Creek would certainly have an impact on Coweta County growth, but would not speculate as to how much.

Ellis Cadenhead of Newnan Utilities is sure of one thing: "We're sure that whatever EPD puts out, it will be more stringent than they have now. Any time they come out with new rules and regulations, they're more restrictive than they were before.

"One good thing," Cadenhead continued, "we don't take any water out of the Chattahoochee. We do take it out of the tributaries." Cadenhead said he did not plan to lose sleep while the three states battle over water.

In Fayetteville, water department director Rick Eastin, also an active participant in the ARC managers' commission, agreed that comments now would be premature. "We don't know at this point," he said. "There is no definitive plan yet. We've submitted some proposals, but nothing has been adopted yet. We're looking at the entire Chattahoochee-Flint basin, and that all comes back to the Apalachicola."

This kind of "water war" is common in the West and Midwest, he remarked, but a new phenomenon in the South.