Dialogue between Atlanta and Georgia
January 25, 2007 at 12:44 pm by Web Editor in News
The Senate Natural Resources Committee convened at the Statehouse Wednesday to discuss Gov. Sonny Perdue’s "Go Fish Georgia" plan. Everyone on the committee seemed pretty gung-ho about Sonny’s vision, but it’s frankly hard to see it as a positive development. Emphasis on "development" intended.
Atlanta: We want to clean up our rivers, preserve them for future generations.
Georgia: But that doesn’t make anybody any money. It’s a loser. You’ve got to tie that idea to a winner, namely a big moneymaker, and when you look at success stories like Buckingham Palace and Mount Rushmore and Vegas you really can’t go wrong with tourism.
Atlanta: Yes, but…
Georgia: Fishing! Fishing is a great tourist attraction. Make Georgia the fishing capital of the world!
Atlanta: But we want to clean up our rivers. Georgia has a big concentration of blackwater rivers along its coast. Blackwater rivers have higher organic content. That means when mercury — from coal-fired power plants, for example — goes into the water, the bottom of the food chain absorbs it quicker and introduces it into the food chain. We need stricter environmental laws to ensure that…
Georgia: Fine, fine. You can do that too. But first you’re going to need access points to the rivers and that means more roads. The more people we can pack in, the bigger the roads. Once you get down to the docks, and incidentally we need more of those too — no big deal at $100,000 a pop, but I know a guy who can do it — you’re going to need a place to stay, preferably luxurious.
Atlanta: Yeah, but what about the rivers?
Georgia: The rivers, sure. You’ll need your hotels down there by the rivers, and your high-class restaurants and your convention centers so you get not just commerce but commerce on a grand scale. Your golf courses, you bet. You make it so nice people start thinking they don’t want to go there part-time anymore, they want to live there year-round, so you start putting in your condominiums and your townhouses and your bigger boat docks, sure, because these people love to fish. That’s the reason they came in the first place.
Atlanta: Yes, but aren’t we talking about the…
Georgia: The rivers, sure. You build it all right down on the rivers. Even put a river boat in there with a Mark Twain look-alike to…
Atlanta: But that still doesn’t get to the heart of the matter, which is that we’d like to improve the health of Georgia’s rivers in the face of overpopulation and overdevelopment.
Georgia: Look, you really don’t know anything about Georgia. The fact is much of the state is suffering from lack of economic development. You go down to Twiggs County, you’ll see the real Georgia, the other Georgia. Some of your coastal communities — Brunswick is a good example — these places need the state to make some smart, sound investments. We don’t need do-gooder environmentalists prohibiting the mighty engine of economic growth that is rightly ours as much as yours.
Atlanta: All I’m saying is I don’t trust a proposal for a cleaner environment in which the chief component is economic development. Every time you start talking about the rivers, you can’t contain your excitement for investment. With all of that development stimulated by the tourist trade, how are you going to protect your natural resources?
Georgia: I got a great plan for that.
Atlanta: Well, I’d sure love to hear it.
Georgia: Once we lay the initial groundwork, we’ll let the market take over.
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