By John Ruch
Officials are investigating two pollution complaints about Atlanta’s public safety training center amid a sediment runoff dispute likely headed to court next month. Facility planners say it is passing inspections and that protesters are to blame for one instance of damaged erosion controls.
Sediment runoff from the DeKalb County site into the Intrenchment Creek watershed is a fundamental issue in an appeal challenging the training center’s site-clearing permit, which was denied by the County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) on April 12. The appellants’ attorney, Jon Schwartz, says he expected to file an appeal in court “probably within the next two weeks.”
Meanwhile, several residents and activists in the area say, sediment from the site continues to flow into streams – though if and how much of that is legally allowed is a crux of the appeal’s dispute. “We and residents have documented sentiment coming from the tributary on the Prison Farm almost every time it rains,” said Margaret Spalding, executive director of the South River Watershed Alliance (SRWA), which is involved in the legal challenges to the permit. The site is part of the former Atlanta Prison Farm.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says it received resident complaints that were forwarded to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD), which in turn sent them to the County for investigation.
“EPD has received two complaints regarding sediment runoff from the Atlanta public safety training center site, one last week and one this week,” said EPD spokesperson Sara Lips. She said that both complaints will be available on the EPD’s public portal “once the investigation is complete and the complaints are closed.”
A County spokesperson said more time is needed to identify complaint documents or information for comment.
The EPD has separately approved a permit for the project and defended its adherence to water quality standards for sediment runoff. The SRWA is separately appealing that EPD permit in a process that will be heard by an administrative law judge in a hearing that Spalding says has yet to be scheduled. SRWA is also a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the County’s swap of part of the adjacent Intrenchment Creek Park with a private developer, which is a target of the Defend the Atlanta Forest protest movement along with the training center.
The enormously controversial training center is in a preliminary land-clearing phase at a City-owned site within unincorporated DeKalb County on Key and Constitution roads. While the facility is intended for the City police and fire departments, it is being planned by the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF), a private nonprofit.
The runoff controversy is centered on two apparently undisputed and contradictory points: a state legal cap on sediment runoff in the creek’s watershed, and the training center site’s discharge of sediment into the creek’s tributaries. At the ZBA meeting, Schwartz displayed photos of alleged sediment runoff from the site into a creek tributary, with no objection from attorneys for the APF and County. Spalding and an anonymous resident who volunteers with SRWA also provided SaportaReport with photos taken in April showing sediment in a tributary for the creek, allegedly from the training center site.
Schwartz and the appellants argue that the cap is already far exceeded, and thus no land disturbance, including the training center, can be legally permitted in the watershed at this point. The County, APF and EPD have emphasized EPD opinions that such a cap does not apply to the training center site and that a different type of permit, which allows some runoff constrained by various standard erosion control tactics, is OK. Those tactics, known as “best management practices” (BMP), include sediment-catching fences and ponds.
APF Project Manager Alan Williams described and defended the BMP at an April 25 meeting of the Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee (CSAC), a group reviewing the project while administered by the APF itself. The CSAC has had many transparency, ethics and politicization issues. CSAC member Amy Taylor – who is also an SRWA member – filed the permit appeal with the ZBA, while some other members recently appeared in City promotional videos supporting the training center and attempting to counter the protest movement. Joining Taylor in the permit appeal are resident Carolyn Tucker and District 6 County Commissioner Ted Terry.
In the April 25 meeting, Williams acknowledged controversy about the BMP and emphasized the months of reviews and repeated support by EPD and County officials. He said the project’s “uniqueness” is “so many thousands of feet” of silt fencing constructed in double rows with mulch in between. Temporary sediment ponds are being installed as part of the first phase, he said.
“Our main goal is to keep any sediment from leaving our site,” said Williams. But he did not address the reports that sediment is leaving the site, nor the EPD opinions that some sediment legally can do so.
The BMP features, Williams said, are inspected daily – initially a requirement of a court order related to Taylor’s permit appeal – by himself or a third party. In addition, he said, County officials have inspected the site five or six times, some planned and some surprises. He did not provide any official documents or other evidence beyond his commentary.
Under questioning by CSAC co-chair Sharon Williams about whether any problems were found during the BMP inspections, Alan Williams did not give a definitive and comprehensive answer but emphasized a major problem that was allegedly caused by protesters. In a mass assault on the site by hundreds of protesters on March 5, some of them destroyed about 2,000 feet of erosion control fencing, he said. That damage was noted by inspectors and took two to three days to repair, he said.
Sharon Williams, who has been a vocal critic of protesters in previous CSAC meetings, repeatedly emphasized that report in the April 25 meeting discussions. She pointed to the “irony” that “the only thing that was notable that the ecoterrorists, the anarchists, whatever you want to call them” had torn down erosion control fencing, “which is contrary to their goals.”
There was no mention of any complaints pending via EPA and EPD.
Alan Williams’ suggestion that the facility is passing inspections is partly supported by two County reports dating to February that SaportaReport obtained from Schwartz. A Feb. 15 complaint alleged that land was being disturbed and trees removed prior to BMP installation, including within stream buffers. Inspectors deemed that there were no code violations. A Feb. 23 inspection of the initial BMP installation found no issues.
In the April 25 meeting, Taylor questioned Alan Williams about fulfilling a supposed court order to have an “environmental supervisor” on the site as well as the daily inspections. He said the court order did not include such a requirement, which appears to match the language of the order.
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