A stream sediment monitoring device that gathers data key to a pollution dispute about the Atlanta public safety training center’s permit was quietly shut down by a federal agency 10 days after an appeal filing in a move that may also affect a consent decree on sewage problems.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the Feb. 16 shutdown of live turbidity data from an Intrenchment Creek “streamgage” device was due to “safety concerns” about the Defend the Atlanta Forest protests and will continue indefinitely. Local environmentalists and an academic say the timing is suspicious, the missing data is irreplaceable, and that police frequently harass some of them when they do water-quality testing in the area.
USGS spokesperson Jason S. Burton said the agency notified the City of Atlanta and DeKalb County about the intent to deactivate the device and halt its live pollution data. “They agreed with the USGS’s decision to discontinue servicing this streamgage until the safety issues at the site are resolved,” he said.
The City and the Atlanta Police Foundation, the private nonprofit leading the training center plan, did not respond to comment requests. County spokesperson Quinn Hudson claimed his government “was unaware of the station being shut down or why it was shut down.”
The streamgage and related USGS reports are the source of data at the heart of a legal challenge to the training center’s land disturbance permit. That appeal – which was filed Feb. 6 – claims Intrenchment Creek is already over a sediment-runoff cap established by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD). But EPD and planners say the cap does not apply to the project and that some runoff is acceptable. The appeal was denied by the County Zoning Board of Appeals on April 12, but District 6 County Commissioner Ted Terry is now asking a court to review the case.
The streamgage pollution data is also crucial to monitoring that is required as part of a federal consent decree about City sewage discharges that runs through 2027, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPD also plays a role in that, according to EPA, because it reviews plans submitted as part of National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits.
“The data collected by the USGS station is part of an instream monitoring plan that is submitted to and approved by Georgia EPD under the City’s NPDES permits,” said EPA spokesperson Davina Marraccini. “EPA has not made any finding at this time regarding whether any lapse in this data collection constitutes a violation of the consent decree.”
EPD spokesperson Sara Lip said her agency has no knowledge of USGS stations and referred questions there. She did not immediately respond to follow-up questions about the USGS’s acknowledgment that it had shut down the turbidity monitoring and the EPA’s statement.
The nonprofit South River Watershed Alliance (SRWA) – an opponent of the training facility plan and a supporter of its legal appeal – has been involved in a water-quality monitoring program in the watershed since 2018. SRWA board president Jacqueline Echols said the deliberate halt of turbidity data must be considered a consent-decree violation. “Collection of these data is required by Atlanta’s federal consent decree now set to expire in 2027, making the city’s failure to collect these data a violation,” she said.
The USGS operates an extensive national network of streamgages with the fundamental purpose of monitoring the height and flow of streams and rivers. The devices include a tube with sensors that sit underwater, collecting data every 15 minutes and uploading it to a public website every hour. The live data is widely used among academics and environmentalists, according to Sarah H. Ledford, a hydrologist and Georgia State University geosciences professor who uses local streamgage data in her research, some of which is in collaboration with SWRA.
The Intrenchment Creek streamgage and several others in the area are different in that they include pollution-monitoring devices as well. According to the SWRA, that is due to sewage-related consent decrees with both the City and the County, which help to pay for the stations. A key measurement is turbidity, or the cloudiness of the water, which Ledford said is an indirect way of assessing how much sediment is running off into the stream.
The streamgage in question – numbered by USGS as 02203700 – is below the Constitution Road bridge over the creek in DeKalb County. It is not on the training center site, which is on Key and Constitution roads, but rather about 500 feet to the east of its boundary and on the other side of Constitution.
Ledford said that streamgage’s turbidity data was the basis for the EPD cap on pollution in the creek that is central to the dispute over the training center’s permit and sediment runoff.
As a frequent user of the area’s streamgage data, Ledford quickly noticed that the turbidity measurements went offline and stayed that way for months – the only one in the area to do so. The basic measurements of height and flow remain functional and available online.
Ledford said streamgages require regular maintenance and calibration, so shutdowns are not unusual but are typically brief. The timing and length of the Intrenchment Creek streamgage’s shutdown, she said, was “extremely unusual” and spawned rumors among opponents that police or other officials ordered the move to foil the permit appeal.
The idea, Ledford said, “is once they got wind we were going to bring up a legal argument about sediment coming off that site, they didn’t want anyone to be able to measure sediment…. It would be a very big coincidence.”
Regardless, the shutdown indeed means a permanent loss of scientific data. “Because we’re now missing over four months of data … we cannot calculate how much sediment is going to come off that site,” said Ledford. “The loss of that data is extremely critical and you can’t go back and figure it out.”
“The USGS decided to cease maintenance of this streamgage in mid-February due to safety concerns from ongoing protests around the site,” said Burton, the agency spokesperson. In addition, he said, “the water quality monitoring equipment on this streamgage was deactivated because it requires frequent maintenance visits to sustain accuracy.”
A precipitation sensor that remained active was also shut down, on March 25, because it became clogged due to lack of maintenance, Burton said.
Burton did not immediately respond to questions about the “safety concerns” and whether USGS staff had been directly threatened or attacked, or if the concerns were speculative. Some protesters in the area previously threw rocks or Molotov cocktails in the direction of utility workers in the area, according to police reports. However, since then, a multiagency police task force has swept the training center site and the County’s adjacent Intrenchment Creek Park, with officials saying there are few, if any, protesters remaining camped there.
The SRWA is involved in water-quality testing near that streamgage and many other sites in the watershed in collaboration with Ledford. SRWA Executive Director Margaret Spalding said Atlanta Police officers frequently stop her and “inhibit” her from the water-sampling work, which is particularly focused on measuring the bacteria E. coli. She said the stops continue even after repeated notices to police, including an April email.
“Generally, they hold me up questioning whether it’s within my right to collect water samples from the creek for testing,” she said. “Our process is consistent. We remain on the road, in the right of way, and/or on the bridge on Constitution Road and Intrenchment Creek when we sample. We do not enter private property.”
“With all of the police swarming around the prison farm site 24/7 and the location of the monitoring site, which is totally visible from Constitution Road, the ‘safety’ issue lacks merit,” Echols said of the USGS’s shutdown of the device. “The data is captured automatically via a probe. It seems to be less about safety and more about discontinuing data collection related to water quality, specifically sediment, in Intrenchment Creek.”
Correction and update: A previous version of this story incorrectly described the EPD’s role in National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permits. This story has been updated with comment from Jacqueline Echols of SRWA.
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