ATLANTA — The City of Atlanta is paying more than $163,000 in a settlement with state environmental regulators. State officials said the city’s main water plant fouled the Chattahoochee River dozens of times during a one-year period.
As the city’s population has boomed, the Department of Watershed Management has been upgrading the RM Clayton Water Management Center.
Yet a state order obtained by 11Alive shows it fouled the Chattahoochee at an average rate of more than once a week.
Inside the city limits, the look of the landmark Chattahoochee River changes abruptly.
You go through the Buckhead neighborhoods, and it’s very pastoral," said Joe Jarrell, a lifelong kayaker. "And then you turn the corner..."
The bend in the river yields industrial sites with pipes discharging directly into the river. One of those sites is the RM Clayton plant – which treats Atlanta’s wastewater, sending a cleaner version of it back into the Chattahoochee.
"We used to paddle it pretty regularly," said Jarrell, who moved his family to a neighborhood downstream from the RM Clayton plant. They used to paddle there.
"About a year ago, we were out there with some friends and just noticed the water was not clean," he said.
Around that time, the state Environmental Protection Division reported 69 “effluent limit violations” at the RM Clayton plant starting about a year earlier. The city watershed department agreed to pay $163,056.81 to the state to settle the violations.
About a month ago, the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper found high levels of E. coli in the Chattahoochee – nearly one year after the period when the EPD documented the 69 violations.
Jarrell and his kayaking family no longer use their watercraft in the portion of the river closest to their home.
"It’s been about a year," he said. "It’s a shame we don’t have our home section access to it anymore."
EPD also found illegal overflows at Atlanta's South River and Utoy water reclamation centers during the same period of time. The settlement includes those violations.