ATLANTA - Environmentalists are claiming a victory in the state's
recent decision to withdraw a wastewater-treatment permit for a residential
development on a McIntosh County hammock.
The Environmental Protection Division reversed course when it reviewed
the permit application for Union Island in preparation for a hearing
on an appeal brought by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf
of the Altamaha Riverkeeper.
"It was a mistake," said Jeff Larson, assistant chief of
EPD's Watershed Protection Branch.
The permit should never have been issued because the proposed system
that would spray treated waste onto the land would have been located
in an area subject to high water, he said.
"We reviewed the permit application and its design and did not
catch its location in a 100-year flood plain," he said.
Larson said the developer of the 18 vacation homes, Southeast Georgia
Land and Development Co., could apply for another permit that accounts
for the flooding potential. He said the initial application should
have taken it into consideration.
"It's a shared situation, the way I'd like to put it, that one
should make an adequate review of their own project before they submit
it," he said.
Environmentalists say the permit withdrawal was significant because
it stalls future construction on other small islands or hammocks like
Union Island, especially in McIntosh County, which is ripe for development.
"Georgia's priceless salt-marsh estuary system deserves the best
regulation, and we couldn't be more pleased that, in this case, the
state has done the right thing," said Deborah Sheppard, executive
director of Altamaha Riverkeeper.
There's just not enough land on the 8.4-acre marsh to handle wastewater
from 18 homes, according to the Southern Environmental Law Center,
which, along with the Altamaha Riverkeeper, had challenged the permit.
The homes would have been served by what was essentially a common
large septic tank, capable of processing about 8,000 gallons of wastewater
daily, Sheppard said.
"The amount of water that went into the system was too large
for the size of the drainage field available there," said SELC
attorney Adam Kron.
The soil on Union Island is sandy and porous and the water table is
only 3? feet beneath the surface, he said.
"The water would have moved through the soil too quickly," Kron
said. "There wouldn't have been enough time for it to percolate
and pull nitrates out before hitting the water table."
Those factors and the occasional flooding from tides and storms would
have made it likely the sewage would have gotten into the groundwater
and pristine marsh, Kron said.
Marsh hammocks like Union Island have remained undeveloped so far
because technical problems of developing such small areas would have
erased any profits, Kron said. But now that coastal land has begun
to sell at a premium, more developers are considering the idea.
While happy that EPD corrected its error, Sheppard said county commissioners
made the first mistake in rezoning the marsh hammock for residential
development from its conservation-preservation status.
The rezoning was approved in April 2006 amid objections from residents.
"I've never seen such a large cross section of people in the
community come out and get upset about something like this," Sheppard
said. "Many of these were very conservative people."
Sheppard believes the island could serve four or five residences,
but is just not big enough or suitable for the community the developer
had envisioned. She called the EPD decision to pull back and re-evaluate
important and unusual.
"We're not pleased that we've gotten to this place, but the state
Environmental Protection Division and the Attorney General's office
deserve high compliments for protecting the coast."
Times-Union correspondent Carole Hawkins contributed to this report.
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