Local officials and environmentalists are voicing concerns about a request that the city of Atlanta sell property it owns in Dawson County for a 2,000-acre reservoir on Shoal Creek.

The project would pump water from the Etowah River, upstream of Rome, to serve metropolitan communities in the Chattahoochee river basin.

“The intention is to take 100 million gallons a day out of our watershed and not return it,” Rome Mayor Wright Bagby Jr. said. “We sent a letter asking them not to do it.”

Click here to see a PDF of the letter.

Bagby said the withdrawal is not significant “under today’s conditions” but could affect future development in downstream communities such as Canton, Cartersville and Rome.

The Etowah and Oostanaula rivers meet in downtown Rome to form the Coosa River, which runs through Alabama to join the Tallapoosa River north of Montgomery.

Both Florida and Alabama are contesting the amount of water Georgia retains from shared riverways, and Joe Cook, executive director of the Coosa River Basin Initiative, said a federal judge’s ruling that Lake Lanier was not meant as a reservoir for metro Atlanta has the region scrambling for other sources.

“Everyone’s in a panic to secure alternate water supplies,” Cook said. “We have to be vigilant to protect the integrity of the Coosa basin.”

The land in question is part of a 10,130-acre site in Dawson Forest that Atlanta bought in the 1970s for a possible second airport.

It is managed as a recreational area by the Georgia Forestry Commission.

A private developer, Republic Resources Inc., is working with the Etowah Water and Sewer Authority in Dawson County on the estimated $600 million project.

An Atlanta City Council resolution asking Mayor Shirley Franklin to “entertain discussion” of the property sale is awaiting a recommendation from the city’s transportation committee. The committee deferred action at its Sept. 16 meeting to gather more information.

Even with the property in hand, the reservoir would not be a done deal.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would likely move to protect the Shoal Creek habitat of the endangered Etowah and Cherokee darters, and Alabama could launch an objection.

Also, Georgia law currently bars the interbasin transfer. Bagby’s letter asks Atlanta officials to hold off while regional water planning councils are crafting a new statewide water plan.

Click here to see a topographic map of the tract.