Atlanta Suburb Faces Wastewater Pollution Lawsuit

For over a decade, two wastewater treatment plants operated by the City of Dallas, located 32 miles northwest of Atlanta, have been in violation of state and federal water quality laws, GreenLaw claims.

Despite fines totaling $246,000 levied by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division over the past five years, this suburban community of 10,500 residents has not taken action to prevent repeated sewage overflows into Pumpkinvine Creek, a tributary of the Etowah River in the Coosa River Basin.

"It is imperative that the city face up to its responsibility to obey water quality protection laws that are designed to preserve the health of our citizens, both in Dallas and in surrounding areas of the Coosa River Basin," said Hutton Brown, senior attorney with GreenLaw.

Wastewater enters a Coosa River Basin waterway. (Photo courtesy CRBI)

"We have tried every other approach to get the City of Dallas to take action to stop this pollution, but even serious financial penalties have not had an impact," said Brown. "We presume legal action will get the attention of city officials."

According to Georgia Environmental Protection Division records, since January 2004, the city has violated state and federal laws on 2,078 different occasions by failing to meet the requirements of its discharge permits and through sewage spills totaling more than 4.5 million gallons.

In 2007, EPD levied fines against the city totaling $173,000, and in 2009 the agency has documented four illegal discharges.

These spills violate the Federal Clean Water Act, the Georgia Water Quality Control Act and other statewide pollution standards.

Joe Cook, who serves as executive director of the Coosa River Basin Initiative and Riverkeeper, said, "The pollution from these two wastewater plants can no longer be ignored. Ten years is too long. Dallas cannot just keep on paying to pollute the Etowah River indefinitely. It must clean up this mess."

The city has 60 days to respond to the letter and negotiate a remedy; otherwise, GreenLaw has the right to file a lawsuit on behalf of Coosa River Basin Initiative in U.S. District Court.

Draining more than 5,000 square miles of land, the Upper Coosa River Basin ranges from southeastern Tennessee and north central Georgia to Weiss Dam in northeast Alabama.

The endangered Etowah darter, Etheostoma etowahae, is found in the Coosa River Basin. (Photo courtesy CRBI)

The Basin is the historic habitat of 100 different fish species, including 12 endemic species. For a river basin in a temperate climate, the Coosa River basin has the greatest number of endemic fish species in the world. Thirty species of fishes, mussels, snails and crayfishes are found in this river basin and nowhere else, including six species listed as federally endangered or threatened.

"Sadly," says the Coosa River Basin Initiative on its website, "15 species of mussels and eight species of snails have been lost from the Upper Coosa Basin. In the Upper and Lower Coosa River Basins together, a total of 37 snails and mussels have been lost. Researchers say that this loss is considered the largest single extinction event in U.S. history."

Of the mussels and snails remaining in the Upper Coosa River Basin, seven are listed as federally threatened or endangered.

The ecology of the Coosa River Basin and public health in the basin is threatened by dams, sedimentation, point-source releases, non-point source runoff, stormwater runoff, air pollution, past industrial and land use practices, introduced or exotic species and water transfers outside the basin.

Paulding County, for which Dallas is the county seat, has consistently ranked among Georgia’s top ten fastest growing counties. During the 1990s, it ranked seventh among the nation’s fastest growing counties. The county's current population is 133,135, up by more than 50,000 people since 2000.

During the next 25 years, the population of the Upper Coosa River Basin is expected to more than double, growing to more than two million people.

Copyright Environment News Service, ENS, 2009. All rights reserved.