District Court Concurs: Cochran Violates Its Wastewater Permit

(Darien, Ga. July 26, 2002)--The U.S. District Court agrees with the Altamaha Riverkeeper’s contention that the City of Cochran has been in violation of its wastewater treatment permit at least 105 times.

On July 23, the Court ordered Cochran to pay a penalty of $26,250 for ongoing Clean Water Act violations at its Jordan Creek sewage treatment plant. The penalty will be paid to the U.S. Treasury.

The Court found that from July 1995 to July 2001, the city of Cochran regularly exceeded the effluent limitations in its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit from the Environmental Protection Division. There were a total of 105 distinct, monthly average violation of the NPDES permit, according to court documents.

The sewage treatment plant discharges into Jordan Creek, a tributary of the Ocmulgee River and part of the Altamaha River watershed.

In September 2002, the Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest, a non-profit environmental law organization, and Don Stack of Stack & Associates, a private environmental and land use law firm with offices in Savannah and Atlanta, filed a federal lawsuit against Cochran on behalf of the Altamaha Riverkeeper organization.

“We are pleased to see the Court recognize the contention we’ve been making that the city had been in long-standing non-compliance with the Clean Water Act,’’ Don Stack said. “We are pleased that the Court has also recognized that the interim measures taken in the past were not adequate. We are optimistic that the city’s new plant will remedy those long-standing violations. It is extremely unfortunate that the city wasted many thousands of taxpayers dollars in an attempt to defend its long-standing history of non compliance.’’

Cochran rejected several attempts by the Altamaha Riverkeeper to settle the suit.

“We are disappointed that we were not able to come to an agreement with Cochran without going to litigation because this will cost the taxpayers,’’ said Justine Thompson, Director, Georgia Center for Law in the Public Interest. “If Cochran had been willing to settle the case, we could have worked something out so that the money went back into the community. They rejected our attempts to do that.’’

The goal of the suit, said Deborah Sheppard, executive director of ARK, was to make the waters of Jordan Creek and the Ocmulgee River cleaner so that residents can safely fish and swim in those areas.

“They are finally doing the right thing, we are achieving protection of the water quality,’’ Sheppard said.

In the court documents, Judge Wilbur D. Owens, Jr. noted that the penalty could have been much higher.

“ARK has presented evidence of 105 permit violations occurring from July 1995 to July 2001. Many of these violations were monthly violations, which could be multiplied by the number of days in the months, bringing the total number of violations to well over 600. Because the defendant is a municipality and the taxpayers will be ultimately responsible for the penalty, the court will calculate the violations as equitable as possible and assess $250 per penalty for 105 penalties.’’

ARK has applied to the national Waterkeeper Alliance to expand the programs in its watershed by creating an Ocmulgee Riverkeeper Organization. The Ocmulgee Riverkeeper would work with the Altamaha Riverkeeper to protect and restore the water quality and flow of the Ocmulgee from its Atlanta area headwaters, the Alcovy, the Yellow and the South rivers to its confluence with the Oconee at Lumber City.