Who Owns Water?

There’s a lot at stake on a few, big, slow, brown rivers in the deep South. The Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint Basin is becoming the canary in the coal mine for a looming East Coast water crisis. The Hanson brothers grew up in Atlanta beside the Chattahoochee River. In March 2013, they returned and paddled, together and separately, the 542 miles of the basin from its source in the Appalachian Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico to tell the story of an endangered and essential water resource.

“Water Wars! Give me another drink of whiskey, and I’ll tell you something different.” Uncle Tony of Columbia, Georgia, told Michael this at Tony’s riverside cattle ranch in south Georgia. Michael and David Hanson met dozens of characters like Tony while paddling canoes through Georgia, Alabama and Florida.

The three states are locked in a political and legal battle over the rivers’ water, a fight that's gone to the Supreme Court with no real resolution. The conflict centers around Atlanta, a sprawling city that was a few months away from running dry during a 2007 drought. The rain is falling again, but the fundamental question in the ACF river system remains: Who owns the water?

The battle over fresh water is not just a story of the arid West anymore.

Brothers Michael and David Hanson paddled the length of the ACF rivers in March and April of 2013. Along with co-director and editor Andrew Kornylak, they recorded footage throughout the journey, meeting people like Tony and listening to their ground-level perspective.

The film has been supported by two Patagonia environmental grants, the trailer won an AI-AP Motion Arts Award, and Canoe & Kayak magazine published David Hanson’s “The Water Wars” feature story in the December issue.

We’re currently finalizing music licensing, motion-graphic maps and Andrew’s final tightening of the edit screws. Then we’ll drink a big whiskey for Uncle Tony and the colorful, welcoming people we met along the rivers.

— David Hanson, Michael Hanson and Andrew Kornylak

We asked the 2013 Mountainfilm Commitment Grant winners to report upon their projects. This blog marks the third in the series. Read about The Rider and The Wolf and Mending the Line.