Fishing Around in the Flint
With Georgia Congressmen Lynn Westmoreland (R-Grantville) and Nathan Deal (R-Gainesville) dusting off out-of-date and environmentally flawed plans to build 
dams on the Flint River, it’s a good idea for friends of Georgia Rivers to be current on the discussions going on on the issue. Here’s a quick summary with some links to websites.
- Representative Westmoreland has proposed a $10 million study of the feasibility and environmental impact of building reservoirs on the Flint River.
- Representative Deal told the Gainesville Times in March he is drafting legislation to reauthorize federal projects on the Flint, the same ones congress de-authorized in 1986.
- On June 27, former President Jimmy Carter spoke to a group of canoeists at the end of their weeklong Paddle Georgia trip down the Flint about his role in stopping a dam at Sprewell Bluff while he was governor in the early 1970s. Carter’s detailed essay about his experiences with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and his veto of the Sprewell Bluff Dam was the Preface to the Flint River Guidebook and is available here on the Brown’s Guide website in the Streams, Rivers and Lakes Blog. If you haven’t read this before, it’s a valuable document for fans of Georgia rivers.
- American Rivers president Rebecca Wodder wrote an op-ed essay in the August 13th issue of the Atlanta Journal Constitution calling Westmoreland’s and Deal’s ideas about damming the Flint “so old school.”
- AJC environmental writer Stacey Shelton provided a good summary of what is going on in Georgia with respect to reservoirs from federal, state and local levels, including Westmoreland’s and Deal’s Flint ideas, in “Talk of damming Flint River stirs anger.”
Here on the Brown’s Guide site, you’ll find more information about the Flint than is available anywhere else including:
- A profile of the Flint, including scenic locations where you can experience the river first hand.
- Flint River canoe trips by Reece Turrentine and Claude Terry
- A Flint River corridor map showing all the bridges on the river with distances to Jim Woodruff Dam on Lake Seminole and below Lake Seminole on the Apalachicola, to the Gulf of Mexico
- Former President Jimmy Carter’s essay about his experiences with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and his veto of the Flint River Sprewell Bluff Dam plan when he was governor
- A Gallery of Georgia’s River People illustrations, including a number of Flint River illustrations - three showing U.S. presidents who had some involvement with the Flint
- My 1st Person blog on My Favorite River, which just happens to be the Flint.
We’ll stay current on the talk about Flint River dams and keep you posted on the discussion in my 1st Person Blog and in the Streams, Rivers and Lakes blog.
PHOTO CREDITS: Flint River photos by Beth Young, Cahaba River Publishing.