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Houston County Residents Work to Keep the Dirt Out

July 2010

ARK members Walt & Becky Wood continue their efforts to insure that construction projects in Houston County are using Best Management Practices (BMP) that will keep construction dirt from entering the Ocmulgee River and its tributaries. Follow their efforts to document problems and find solutions.

Macon Authority Spill Report This is what Beulah Branch looked like on the morning of 6.17.10 after a 1.25" rain event on the night of 6.16.10. Beulah Branch is a bold stream that flows into Mossy Creek at Lake Joy in Houston County, North East of Perry, GA. Sandefur Road is being widened from two lanes to three under a contract administered by Houston County (LIA). This is a SPLOST Project. There is a possibility that some of the muddy water came from a project on a Church property a little north of Sandefur Road -- that has been discussed with County Officials and you may see a complaint to EPD in the next few days regarding stream buffer violations and failure to procure a permit (it's less than one acre, but it is definitely within 200' of state waters -- it borders state waters). County officials were working this late Friday -- we will know more tomorrow.

After our initial complaint to local officials concerning problems with BMPs within this project, there was some response, but deficiencies continued to exist, so we called the Macon DNR Office on the morning of 6.17.10 and spoke with Mr. Shea Groebner who promised a site visit on 6.18.10. It is our understanding that he informed Houston County Officials and the Contractor of needed improvements. During the late afternoon of 6.30.10, the Sandefur Road area experienced another 1.25" rain event as measured by my rain gauge. The following photos were taken during that rain event -- the spots you see on the photos are raindrops.

Beulah Branch on west side of creek.

This photo shows the BMPs nearest Beulah Branch on the west side of the creek. The BMPs have once again failed and sediment is headed to the creek on the left side of the photo. This area is one of several storm water discharges near this creek.

Wide view.

A wide view of previous photo showing the creek in relation to preceding photo.

Area surrounding the discharge

This is the area immediately surrounding the discharge (lower left corner) and the creek can be seen in the foreground -- it flows from right to left in the photo. Note the bare earth in the photo.

East side of Beulah Branch

This area is on the east side of Beulah Branch and shows the proximity of the storm water discharge to the creek. BMP failure is graphically depicted.

Area upslope

This photo shows the area up-slope from the previous photo and depicts free flow of storm water runoff through disturbed, uncovered earth. There is a silt fence of sorts up-slope and in the center of the photo.

We met with Houston County officials on Thursday, July 1, and provided copies of the photos we took on 6.30.10. Improvement of BMPs, including straw cover of disturbed areas, began that afternoon and on Friday, July 2, 2010.

This photo shows additional, fresh straw cover of the area on both sides of the creek. There is still some disturbed and uncovered dirt visible on the west side of the creek (top center of photo), but there was and is, work in progress in that area around the storm drain.

In our opinion, the BMPs within this project are far from adequate, even after recent improvements. The storm drain outlet protections near the creek appear to be inadequate for the amount of water discharged into them. We predict additional failures and further contact with EPD regarding this site. There are four areas of concern in the Sandefur Road area of this project (it also includes widening of Lake Joy Road from two to five lanes, but if you were to look at the two areas you would think that two different contractors were doing the work). Beulah Branch is the prime concern, the other three areas are ephemeral streams, but when they flow, they go directly to Lake Joy and/or Mossy Creek. We will continue to watch and have informed County officials that further sediment into Beulah Branch will go to the contact James provided.

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