Democratic GA House Speaker uses clout to get new lake adjoining his property

[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 5/06/02 ]

Land of state House speaker, family would adjoin new Haralson County reservoir

Graphic: Lakefront land for Murphy family

Tallapoosa -- West Georgia endured some of the worst of the region's droughts in recent years, so state officials are moving to place a 2,300-acre reservoir and recreational lake in Haralson County.

Project boosters say it's just a coincidence that the waves will lap against more than 1,000 acres owned by state House Speaker Tom Murphy and his family.

Murphy (D-Bremen) pushed for the reservoir for years from his Statehouse post, though the site was only recently moved to his property north of I-20. The current plan sends two fingers of the lake into his 50 acres and creates shoreline for two brothers-in-law, his children and a cousin who is a federal judge.

The new lakefront along Beech Creek likely would raise the value of the Murphys' property substantially, and the state would pay the landowners for the property that gets flooded. But a state-paid consultant says the studied alternatives pose too many environmental problems or likely would provoke a legal challenge from neighboring Alabama.

"There's not another place to put it," said consultant Tommy Craig, a Covington attorney. "If you look at the requirements of the Georgia-Alabama agreement and you look at the environmental and wetland impacts, it all points to doing it on Beech Creek."

In addition, Murphy does not list the 50 acres on state financial disclosure reports, as required by law.

Murphy did not return repeated phone messages left over several days seeking comment.

But even a backer of the project, a Haralson County commissioner who served from 1988-93, said the Murphy connection poses questions.

"It appears it's designed to benefit the Murphy family considerably," Tony Ellis said.

In 1999, former Commissioner Ellis' plan to create a reservoir by damming the Tallapoosa River was rejected by the Army Corps of Engineers.

After months of study and a single public hearing last October, consultants plan to send a new permit application for the West Georgia Regional Reservoir to the Corps next week. Last month, the board of the state Department of Natural Resources approved $46 million in bonds over the telephone to pay 90 property owners and build a dam on Beech Creek, a tributary of the Tallapoosa. The vote couldn't wait until a regular board meeting because the bonds were to be sold less than a week later, officials said.

It has not been determined how much landowners will be paid for the flooded property. It's also unknown how much the lakeside property will be worth. But if it's similar to nearby Lake Harris in Alabama, which Craig said is comparable, lakeside lots of less than an acre could range from $20,000 to $85,000. Currently, land owned by the Murphy family is valued at less than $1,000 an acre.

Murphy's brother-in-law Hurtis Bennett owns 904 acres with Murphy's four children: Michael Murphy, a Superior Court judge; Martha Long; Mary Oxendine; and Lynn McAdams. Another brother of Murphy's late wife, Agnes, H.P. Bennett, owns 175 acres that will be partially flooded. And federal Judge Harold L. Murphy, the speaker's cousin, owns 438 acres that would have lake access.

The Bennett family assembled the property decades before the reservoir was pushed. Chester Bennett, the patriarch, bought much of the land after World War II and left it to his children, including Agnes, who married the man who would become Georgia's House speaker. After her death, Murphy inherited the 50 acres between Tallapoosa and Buchanan in 1986.

That year, Georgia suffered one of the worst droughts in modern history. Two years later, the state Environmental Protection Division hatched a plan to "drought-proof" North Georgia with a dozen reservoirs. The first would have been built on the Tallapoosa.

That plan sparked a water war, with Alabama concerned that water would be pumped out of a basin it shares with Georgia to feed metro Atlanta's growth. The stalemate dragged for years.

Last spring, the state gave $1 million to the water authority, which hired Craig and a team of consultants to create an application that would pass environmental muster and appease Alabama.

The consultants started with a commitment of $46 million from the Legislature for the project, but the lake needed to be big enough to support recreation and drinking water. Consultants supplied a soaring population projection, used to justify spread- ing the lake over 2,300 acres.

Most of the area served by the reservoir falls in Carroll County, with a 2000 population of 87,268, and Haralson County, with a population of 25,690. Regional planners expect Carroll to reach 206,100 by 2050 and Haralson to reach 57,700. But the study prepared by Craig's team predicts nearly double that growth, with 400,000 residents for Carroll and 100,000 in Haralson.

The team then considered three locations where water could be dammed for a lake: the Tallapoosa; two converging creeks close to the Alabama line; and Beech Creek. Damming the Tallapoosa was sure to provoke Alabama, and ecologists found protected mussels there. Damming the converging creeks was projected to cost $78 million, the highest estimate.

But Beech Creek posed the drawback of flooding Haralson High School, a regular beneficiary of Murphy donations. "We knew if that football field goes under water, this alternative does, too," Craig said.

It turned out that water level projections would spare the school, while some practice fields will be submerged. So the school will have a lakefront as well.

It was only at that point, Craig said, that he became curious about who owned the property. When he found one of the property owners was Murphy, he told the speaker.

"He said, 'What we want is a drinking water project as long as it doesn't touch my property,' " Craig said. "He said, 'I don't want people to say it was put where it was put to benefit me.' "

When Craig presented the plan to 350 people at a public hearing in October, the question surfaced.

"People wanted to know if I had put this reservoir where it is because of benefits to Speaker Murphy. That's a legitimate question," he said.

Allison Keefer, the state's reservoir coordinator, lamented that the plan was pushed through with little public input. Future projects will feature more hearings, she said.

There are also questions about the cost. The $46 million is probably not enough, Craig said. His consultants estimated $59 million, but without a more thorough geological survey, that's just a guess. That doesn't include the estimated $16.4 million it will cost to move Ga. 120 out of the lake's path.

But many people in west Georgia are too concerned about running out of drinking water to worry about the cost or potential benefits to the Murphy family.

"It looks fishy," said Ellis, the former Haralson County commissioner. "But right now, I'll take anything I can get to supply us with some water."

"Georgia Speaker of the House Tom Murphy is old as dirt, powerful as hell, and whatever he wants he gets, period.

I will not dispute that fact at all.

But, being a resident of the West Ga. area for most of my 34 years, I can tell you this resevoir is badly needed.

A lot of wells that have produced water long before you and I were born have gone dry.

I would be more suspicious if this location was the only one proposed. They first tried to dam up the much larger Tallapoosa river, but Alabama fought that and won.

Plus, you can't just build a 3,000 acre resevoir wherever you want. It dang near takes an act of God to go through all the gubnit agencies involved; EPA, Army corp of Engineers, PRC, etc...

Lastly, it would be a major feat to place a 3,000 acre lake in Haralson co. and not touch land that Murphy or his kin own.

Heck, the money he would make from the inflation of his real estate value if this resevoir is built is chickenscratch compared to what he made of state road construction kickbacks.

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