We are waging
biological warfare on everybody downstream to the Chattahoochee and other
rivers heading to Florida to wipe out their mollusk crop in the Gulf and end
Florida’s complaining about not getting enough Georgia river water. Our refusal
to maintain and expand our infrastructure over decades is well known.
The AJC article,
3/15/19 page A1 “Untreated sewage spills into waterways” reports that Fulton
County’s contribution to sewer spills reached 40 million gallons of sewage
since November 2018.
The City of Atlanta
straddles Fulton and DeKalb Counties and they compete every year in the sewer
spill festivals. Atlanta, Fulton and DeKalb each have budgets over $1 billion
and also have 100 year old sewer systems to replace and expand. See on-line article below:
Fulton County spills
40 million gallons of sewage in rivers, creeks, by Arielle Kass, 3/13/19, AJC.
Since
mid-November, heavy rains that overwhelmed Fulton County’s sewage system caused
more than 40 million gallons of untreated sewage to spill into waterways from
Camp Creek to the Chattahoochee River.
There were
six separate instances when more than a million gallons were spilled at a time.
One 14 million gallon spill into Morning Creek in South Fulton in January was
the worst
spill statewide in at least five years, state officials said.
The recent
spate represents a huge increase in sewage spills for the county since it
entered a 2010 consent agreement with the state Environmental Protection
Division to reduce water pollution. The county spilled just 392,000 gallons of
raw sewage in 2016 and 690,000 in 2017; the totals for 2018 were just over
400,000 gallons until November, when the major spills began.
David
Clark, Fulton’s director
of public works, said before 2010, the county hadn’t been required to track
spills to the level it is now, but he did not think they had ever been this
bad. “This was a very, very abnormal situation,” he said. “The trend has been
down.”
Under the
consent agreement with the EPD, the county has paid $157,450 in penalties for
spills, and the total will rise with the latest failures, which represent
continued violations that have harmed water
quality and the environment, and will cost taxpayers more money as the county tracks water
quality and pays more fines.
Fulton is
not the only local government dealing with sewage overflows in recent months. At
the end of December, DeKalb
County reported
25 sewer spills totaling more than 1 million gallons, and Cobb
County had
a spill along Nickajack Creek that lasted more than a week and spilled an
estimated 13 million gallons. Fulton’s issues have drawn the attention of state
regulators, and in February, the EPD’s watershed compliance manager sent a
letter to county officials telling them they had violated the 2010 agreement
and the state’s rules for water quality and control.
“Every
spill is a big deal,” said Marzieh Shahbazaz, a compliance and enforcement
program manager with the state environmental enforcement agency. “All these are
huge.”
Most of
the Fulton County spills have been caused by heavy rain that overwhelmed an
aging system. The most significant breakdown occurred in south Fulton in
January when the weight of saturated soil contributed to the collapse of a
large sewer pipe in Union City. It forced the county to shut off sewage flow in
that part of the system. With sewage unable to pass through the broken line, it
backed up at the Morning Creek and White Water Creek pump stations, where a
total of 19.5 million gallons went into the waterways in two different spills.
Raw sewage spilled for more than half a day; while a bypass was added to the
system, it will be more than two months before the pipe is completely replaced.
Communities
downstream, including Clayton and Fayette counties, have felt the impact. The
spill likely forced some communities to temporarily change the source of their
drinking water, said Robert Kurbes, the manager for environmental health in the
Fayette County Health Department.
“It’s very
likely that they would adjust their raw water removal until the spill is
remediated,” he said of Fayette County’s water system.
Fulton is
in the midst of a $523.5
million upgrade to its water and sewer system that includes the inspection
of more than 2,000 miles of pipe. Clark said once the system has been fully assessed,
he expects there will be more projects planned to improve the system.
On the
north side of the county, heavy rain led to spills in November, December,
January and February that totaled more than 18 million gallons at Azalea Drive
and Riverside Road near the Chattahoochee River.
Shahbazaz
said the Azalea Drive area has been an issue for many years, but the recent
totals are eye-popping.
“When we
have a lot of rain, we see a lot of spills in that area,” she said. “…Forty
million gallons plus in a short period of time? Even for Fulton County, that’s
not normal.”
Clark said
the northern spills — and 1.8 million gallons that spilled into Camp Creek, at
Cochran Road — occurred when the waterways overflowed their banks, and river
water entered the sewage system through manhole covers. The county has plans to
raise its manhole covers to prevent similar problems in the future, but that
work has not been completed. It is due to be finished this year.
At the
Chattahoochee River, Riverkeeper Jason Ulseth said sewer spills often mean
elevated levels of E. coli bacteria, which could lead to rashes, eye and ear
infections, gastrointestinal distress and other illnesses. He applauds the
county’s recent efforts to reduce spills, but said there’s a long way to go.
“I wish
these projects could have taken place a number of years ago, but I believe the
county is taking these projects seriously,” he said. “It’s never a good thing
for sewage to enter our natural environment.”
Bill Cox,
the superintendent of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, said
the spills would have been a bigger issue in the summer, when more people go to
the river to swim, tube or fish. Now, he said, flows have been high and so
fewer people have been exposed to the untreated sewage in the water.
Still, the
spills mean the cost and effort to purify drinking water downstream increases,
he said. And while spills have been a recurring issue, continued problems
increase the river’s contamination.
“We need
to make sure we’re keeping sewage in the sewage lines, and not in the river,”
Cox said. “We’ve encouraged them over the years to address it, but I don’t know
how long it’s going to take… We were told things would be squared away in 2017.
It’s 2019, and we’re still having these events.”
The county
has until the end of March to respond to the EPD’s violation letter, and Clark
said he expects to have a reply ready next week. In an internal memo to Fulton
County commissioners, Clark said his office plans to inspect about 19 miles of
sewer pipes this year to identify any potential problems that could lead to
failures or spills. Fulton County’s goal should be to keep spills to less than
500,000 gallons of sewage a year, Clark said.
The county
is certain to face consequences from state regulators for the spills, including
likely fines, according to Shahbazaz, the state regulator. Fulton will have to
monitor the water quality on each of the eight rivers and creeks that had
sewage spills for a year following each spill. Shahbazaz said some rivers recover
quickly, particularly if there is a lot of rain to dilute the fecal matter, but
others take longer.
“No one
can correct it,” she said. “It’s just nature, by time.”
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment