The first episode of a three-part series produced for the online environmental news channel Clean Skies News, Water Wars explores the decades long dispute over water rights between Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. The water in question here is the Chattahoochee River which starts in North Georgia and flows south into Alabama and Florida. The two states say Georgia uses too much of the river for its municipal needs leaving them with less to draw on and subsequently harming their ecology. The contention between the states over who owns what and how much, has led to a lawsuit reaching the highest court of the land.

The goal was to produce the Water Wars series in the vein of magazine-style news programs like 60 Minutes and the investigative documentary program Frontline. We relied on a single camera for all filming, and we used supplemental lights for interior interviews. Water is central to the story and is somewhat of a character within itself. Therefore, we made sure to film copious amounts of b-roll of the bodies of water in question which include Lake Lanier, the Chattahoochee River and the Hemphill Water Treatment Plant in Atlanta.

Through carefully selected soundbites with Atlanta stakeholders, along with months of exhaustive research on information from all sides of the debate, viewers can get a comprehensive understanding into how the tri-state water wars came about and if there is any hope for a solution.