A federal panel has protected 23,000 square miles of deepwater corals, believed to be the world’s largest such ecosystem, off the coast of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, meeting in Charleston, approved the plan late Thursday. Advocates say the protection, culminating a decade of advance work, is a first for U.S. fishery councils.

Mississippi wants the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Tennessee’s largest city is pumping too much water out of an aquifer shared by the two states. This week’s filing claims heavy pumping by Memphis has created a “cone of depression” in the aquifer that is drawing more than 24 million gallons of water out of northern Mississippi each day.

The Nestlé Waters facility would open with a minimum of approximately 30-40 employees and invest capital throughout construction and operations in the selected community.  “At this stage of the evaluation process, chances of site selection in this region are about 50/50,” explained Nestlé Waters Natural Resource Specialist Lance Tully.  “If we conclude that one of the spring sites can supply the spring water needed to serve our consumers in the southeast U.S. in a manner consistent with the local environment, the area will become a candidate site for a spring water bottling facility.”

GEORGIA LEADERS are waking up to a reality they should have recognized long ago: Water conservation must play a significant role in planning for the next drought.

If it were only Alabama and Florida that Gov. Sonny Perdue had to fight in the Chattahoochee River water war, then he might have a deal by now. But Perdue also faces strong opposition from downriver communities in his own state.

Georgia’s political leaders are taking another look at legislation aimed at encouraging more water conservation in the wake of a devastating federal court ruling that could restrict Atlanta from its main water supply.

A 23,000-square-mile area stretching from North Carolina to Florida is just part of that entire reef tract now being proposed for protection from potential damage by deep-sea commercial fishing and energy exploration. So far, it’s been relatively untouched by man because of its largely unreachable depths, providing scientists a unique opportunity to protect an ecosystem before it’s destroyed. “Most of the time, science is trying to catch up with exploitation,” Steve Ross of the Center for Marine Science at UNC Wilmington, said.