Water stress, a hallmark of the American West, is spreading east.

The shift is evident on Casey Cox’s family farm in Georgia’s agricultural heartland, where she turned on five giant rotating sprinklers to see her sweet corn through weeks of hot, dry weather last spring.

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More states in the East are placing first-ever restrictions on permits for water use, said Barton “Buzz” Thompson, a professor of natural-resources law at Stanford University, who served as special master in a decadelong fight between Montana and Wyoming over Yellowstone River water.