There’s no giant flow of distinct orange and yellow pollution and toxins like there was in the Colorado gold mine disaster, but there was an EPA-caused disaster in Georgia a few months ago that may turn out to be just as costly. It’s not getting as much media attention but in Greensboro, just east of Lake Oconee on I-20, contractors for the EPA working on a 19th century cotton mill site struck a water main, causing toxic sediment to flow into a nearby creek.
The flow is not visibly as dramatic as that in Colorado but each round of summer thunderstorms have caused more dangerous sediment to wash into the creek.
The creek flows downstream to Lake Oconee and the Oconee River, which provides drinking water to roughly 280,000 people in the state of Georgia. Two fish and two invertebrates that live in the Oconee River are listed as threatened or endangered according to the state.
A former EPA official turned whistleblower, microbiologist Dave Lewis, told Watchdog.org that lead in the soil at the project site is 20,000 times higher than Federal rules for drinking water. The mill site contains 34 hazardous chemicals, all but four of which as listed as “priority pollutants” by the EPA. The Mary Leila Cotton Mill produced sheeting until about 20 years ago.
The mill was a 135,000 square-foot monster with turrets and a water tower that, like many buildings at the time, was covered in lead-based paint. Over the decades, this paint flaked off and leaked lead into the soil. Now, the sediment flows are carrying this lead, plus mercury, arsenic (an early ill-thought at pesticides) and chromium downstream.
The EPA at first denied, but later admitted, that it had funded the cleanup project that caused the accident. The project stemmed from a grant the EPA issued in 2005 to turn the mill and grounds into a housing complex for mentally ill, homeless and indigent. The city of Greensboro objected to the deal and there was concern about the absence of a plan to deal with the hazardous waste. Watchdog did review documents from the EPA and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division that showed a plan to move contaminated dirt elsewhere or cover it with concrete. Lewis said any excavation would send the toxic soil into the creek.
After Lewis inquired about the project, the EPA wrote that it knew nothing about the project in Greensboro. “There is no federal agency involved with this project at the mill property,” said EPA Regional Administrator Heather McTeer Toney. Just months later however, Toney conceded the site was an EPA brownfields grant-funded project and “remediation must be conducted in a manner that is protective of human health and the environment.”
According to Watchdog, the EPA did not respond for comment and “has offered conflicting statements about its involvement in the project, alternating between knowing nothing, providing only data and guidance, and acknowledging, finally, that it funded cleanup and development at the site through a grant to the state.”
