Up In Smoke

Lessons From Talmo

originally published September 19, 2007

Take Highway 129 north out of Athens, cross I-85, and in a few minutes you find yourself in Talmo. The tiny town can’t be seen from the highway, but you can tell it’s there thanks to an unavoidable stink. It smells like rotting carcasses have been burned, and there’s good reason for that: they have. But beyond the lingering stench and sooty remains is one of the most pressing conflicts facing the landscape of North Georgia: with the swift suburbanization of the countryside, what’s the fate of local agriculture?

On Sept. 5, a two-acre wastewater lagoon at Agri-Cycle in Talmo caught fire, sending up 100-foot flames and a gigantic column of black smoke visible for miles around. The first emergency responders arriving on the scene found themselves mostly useless. Being incinerated was a sludge of grease and chicken fat - waste products from local poultry processing plants - that couldn’t be attacked with water hoses. By the next day, firefighters had finally put out the flames with a chemical foam solution. Meanwhile, neighbors were advised to stay indoors until the smoke cleared.

The first news reports indicated suspicions of arson. According to a Sept. 6 article in the Gainesville Times, a neighbor claimed the fire started soon after an individual on an all-terrain vehicle drove down to the lagoon and then departed. In that same article, allegations were made by another neighbor that Agri-Cycle was getting rid of its evidence.

Talmo residents have been complaining about the environmental impact of Agri-Cycle since 2005. A subsidiary of Zurix Water in Thomaston, GA, the company moved into the old Valley Farms facility in northwest Jackson County to utilize the site’s wastewater treatment capacities, along with Valley Farms‘ transferable wastewater-processing license. In 2004, Agri-Cycle began to receive nitrate-compound organic waste from poultry producers, treat it in anaerobic lagoons, and then spray the liquid effluent onto the land for final filtration. Sprayfields are standard procedure in the poultry industry. Agri-Cycle’s innovation was to turn them into a horticultural enterprise, using the wastewater to fertilize wholesale landscaping plants growing on the property.

But on Aug. 21 of this year, the Environmental Protection Division (EPD) shut the company down for a host of violations. Among other things, Agri-Cycle had constructed two lagoons without state approval, overloaded the sprayfields, received domestic waste, and contaminated Allen Creek with fecal coliform bacteria. (Attention Athens: Allen Creek runs snug against Agri-Cycle’s burned lagoon and eventually into the Middle Oconee River.)

Agri-Cycle had appealed the decision on Aug. 30 and was still allowed to operate. However, by Sept. 7, the EPD Director and the Attorney General filed a restraining order, closing the plant and giving it 30 days to meet compliance. On that same day, the office of Georgia Insurance and Fire Safety Commissioner John Oxendine ruled the fire an accident: a short-circuit on an electrical pump used to irrigate from the lagoon sparked the blaze. For the citizens of Talmo, it was all curious timing.

The day after the blaze, Richard Harville, Agri-Cycle’s owner, told 11Alive News that the EPD action was “politically motivated.” He pointed a finger at the neighboring homeowners in Cedar Hollow subdivision, who had lodged the bulk of odor complaints, and the anonymous horde of eager land developers.

It’s difficult for most observers not to sympathize with homeowners whose houses smell like sustained putrescence, and simply dismiss Harville’s statements. It was clear from EPD’s citations that the company was taking on more waste than its facility could process. On the other hand, and in the broad sense - regardless of whether his company is guilty of its many apparent violations - Harville’s position reveals that the Agri-Cycle story has been, in part, another in a swelling body of local conflicts between the agricultural industry and new residential development in North Georgia.

Along those lines, it is to some degree pertinent to ask if the neighbors in Cedar Hollow would be happy if Valley Farms was still processing chickens on the site. Or, what if the old McEver meat-packing company that preceded it were still operating out of the building? There may still have been as many complaints about foul odors and flies, though those operations were active long before new residents moved in and started shouting, “Not in my backyard.” The poultry industry, meanwhile, is big business in Georgia, and its huge volume of waste has to go somewhere. That Agri-Cycle stinks is unfortunate (and perhaps less unfortunate than its other problems), but the economics of an agricultural industry necessitate unappetizing after-effects.

Those exact effects are encroaching upon Northeast Georgia in general. In the past decade, pushed by rampant development from Atlanta, poultry companies have begun to migrate from Cherokee, Forsyth and Hall Counties east toward the South Carolina line. Crystal Farms, the largest commercial egg producer in Georgia, has almost totally relocated to Royston. Others, like Chestnut Mountain Eggs, have contracted with growers in the less populated (for now) northeastern counties. Coming with them are critical land-use issues and potential threats to the health of the local environment.

The fire is long put out, the TV crews are gone, and the sensationalism of the incident has passed. Agri-Cycle is facing increased pressure from the top levels of state government against its surviving in Talmo, and it looks like the neighborhood will finally be cleaned up. North Georgia, though, is still in an identity - and environmental - crisis.

Donn Cooper

New Sewer

Commish Skeptical

originally published September 19, 2007

Athens-Clarke County (ACC) Commissioners got a look at plans for a new sewer line at their work session Sept. 11, and at least a few of them didn’t like what they saw. The sewer line construction being considered is already in county plans as a small part of a longer line to be built beginning in 2015. That’s according to the “service delivery plan” maintained by the ACC Department of Public Utilities. The plan calls for sewer service to be provided at that point to the eastern half of the Sandy Creek basin in the north-central part of the county: land east of that creek and along neighborhoods off of Nowhere and Smokey roads, all the way over to Danielsville Road, Public Utilities Director Gary Duck told commissioners last week.

Ahead-of-schedule construction of a small portion of the Sandy Creek line is being discussed now because a private developer has said he’s willing to pay for it. Typical ACC policy is to accept such offers to build infrastructure that’s already in its plans. At last week’s meeting, however, some commissioners and Mayor Davison expressed doubts about following through with the service delivery plan insofar as running a sewer line northward along Sandy Creek.

The line’s most vocal critic at the meeting was District 8 Commissioner Andy Herod, who said flatly, “I’ve got no personal interest in bringing this forward ahead of time.” Part of some commissioners’ (and some of the staff’s) issue with the line is very specific: it might have to built to follow a section of the North Oconee River Greenway (just inside the 10 Loop), and might have to be exposed aboveground for parts of a 100-foot-long stretch. The section which the developer has proposed to build (a cost to him of a million dollars was mentioned) would run along the east side of the river from an area opposite Athens’ drinking water treatment plant northward to an area near Sandy Creek Drive on the north side of the Loop. From there, the developer could hook in his own connection that would serve a proposed multi-family development to be called High Point, planned for a largely kudzu-covered area north of the Loop and east of Commerce Road. Duck presented commissioners with four options involving varying impact on tree canopy, grading and the greenway itself - as well as varying costs - and said his department would contact the Oconee Rivers Greenway Commission for an opinion before bringing the matter back to commissioners. (Full disclosure: this writer is a member of the greenway commission.)

Wider concerns about the impact of running sewer through the Sandy Creek basin, however, played a large role in discussion at the work session. “If you put sewer in, you invite development,” Mayor Davison said. The comment was a reminder of the Commission’s 2005 decision to run sewer along the Shoal Creek basin on the county’s eastern edge. Like that line, the Sandy Creek line would eventually skirt the “greenbelt” at the edge of the county. Said District 5 Commissioner David Lynn, “Zoning’s very transitional, and once you throw a big piece of infrastructure like this in, typically the zoning’s going to fall into place.” Two proposed development projects - the People of Hope mobile home park and an adjacent subdivision on Freeman Drive - have been granted permission to build their own sewer lift station (which will tie in to existing sewer east of there along Trail Creek) to serve them temporarily, as the plan has so far been, until the Sandy Creek line is built.

District 9 Commissioner Kelly Girtz had concerns about the impacts on water quality in extensive wetlands along Sandy Creek - where the county has invested in conserving land - if the full sewer line is built. “I’m not sure that, A, I’m interested in moving this ahead, or B, in looking at it long-term,” Girtz said. Mayor Davison told Flagpole after the meeting that her concerns extend also to the question of whether infrastructure for more multi-family development is needed when Athens-Clarke is already overbuilt in that regard.

Ben Emanuel

ben@flagpole.com

Homeland Security In Town

originally published September 19, 2007

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will hold a public scoping meeting at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education on Thursday, Sept. 20, 6–10 p.m. to receive public comments about the proposed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. Athens is one of five locations nationwide being considered. For more info: www.uga.edu/nbaf or www.dhs.gov.