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DeKalb gets major fine for more than 200 sewage spills Errors, old pipes cited as problems
By STACY SHELTON, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Published on: 12/11/06
DeKalb County has received one of the largest fines ever imposed by the state for spilling raw sewage more than 200 times into rivers and streams from clogged and broken pipes and equipment failures. The worst was a 10 million-gallon spill directly into the South River last January.
The 18-page consent order that accompanied the $265,875 fine found problems beyond an aging sewer system prone to overflows. Agreed to last month and signed by DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones, the order details human errors and repeated violations of state regulations. Among the violations: failure to properly report spills, clean up spill sites or fully report the severity of the spills. The order describes a sewer system in which the people running it are as much a part of the problem as leaking pipes.
Bill Noell, a manager with the Georgia Environmental Protection Division's compliance unit, said investigators found enough rule violations to raise a red flag. "There were just things we saw that makes you wonder how big a problem is that?" Noell said. "We're finding incidents. It doesn't mean it's rampant, but it caused concern." Noell said the number of spills reported by DeKalb ballooned last year, making DeKalb second only to Atlanta in leaky sewage systems. He's not sure why.
The consent order, which is EPD's primary enforcement tool, covers the 13 months between February 2005 and March 2006. Since then, DeKalb's public sewer system continued to spill raw sewage — more than 180 additional times in amounts ranging from 10 gallons to 12,000 gallons. Some of those overflows sprang from privately owned pipes and did not need to be reported, but the vast majority happened on the public side, according to state records. Unlike most local governments, DeKalb reports even private sewage spills to the state. County officials say they want to err on the side of caution.
DeKalb says the number of spills is to be expected in a system so large. Through a spokeswoman, Jones declined comment on the issue and referred questions to his staff. "To say you're going to eliminate spills entirely ... you're blowing in the wind," said Richard Stogner, executive assistant to Jones and the Board of Commissioners.
Stogner and Roy Barnes (no relation to the former governor of the same name), who is DeKalb County's associate director of public works for the water and sewer division, said their system does not have any more spills than neighboring systems. But according to the EPD's spill database, where the state maintains a record of every spill reported by local governments, only Atlanta has reported more spills than DeKalb since Jan. 1, 2005. DeKalb has reported about 410 sewage spills into creeks, streams and rivers; Atlanta has reported about 960. The next closest system is Cobb's, where about 260 spills have been reported in 2005 and 2006.
Even if one-third of the spills reported by DeKalb came from privately owned lines — a number Noell said would be an extreme exaggeration — then DeKalb still has had more spills in the last two years than either Cobb, Fulton or Gwinnett counties. And since 2004, only Fulton has been fined more than DeKalb for spilling raw sewage — $414,380 to $359,709, according to state records.
Old pipes, careless users
DeKalb, like many other older communities, including Atlanta and Fulton, is facing problems with aging plumbing systems that are costly to fix. DeKalb's oldest pipes date back to about 1915, Barnes said. Atlanta racked up more than $20 million in fines during the 1990s for spilling raw sewage every time it rained. But it took a lawsuit, federal action and a popular mayor for Atlanta to get serious about fixing its century-old plumbing. Now the city is spending nearly $4 billion on a water and sewer overhaul scheduled to be completed in 2014.
K. Scott Robertson, a former state environmental specialist who helped write the consent order and investigated some of DeKalb's major spills, said "You hate to say it, but it [DeKalb] is the next Atlanta. That's the way a lot of people feel about it." But DeKalb officials say their system is not nearly as bad as Atlanta's. They also say their No. 1 problem is not aging pipes, but grease from homes and restaurants.
"We have people who deep-fry their turkey, then they pour 25 or 30 gallons of grease down the drain," Barnes said. Once in the sewer pipes, the grease hardens, blocking lines and causing back-ups. The county recently launched a campaign to teach people to dispose of their grease in the garbage. A review of state records, including the county's reports, show grease is often cited as the cause of spills. Other problems listed are eroded and collapsed sewer pipes; power failures that disable pumps; leaky pipes and separated joints; and rocks and debris clogging the pipes.
Doug Denton of Decatur, an elected supervisor on the DeKalb County Soil and Water Conservation District, says the county's sewer problems are much bigger than grease. "It appears the county has been doing less than the bare minimum to give DeKalb citizenry and state and federal entities the perception that our government is adequately addressing sanitary sewer improvements and repairs," Denton said. "This type of tactic is what led the city of Atlanta into federal court." Denton has complained of sewer spills to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is still investigating. The soil and water district educates the public about federal and state Clean Water laws and oversees enforcement of erosion controls on construction sites.
The state's consent order does not mention grease. But it does say some of the biggest spills were caused by rain seeping into aging, cracked pipes and overwhelming the system — a common problem with old sewers. The consent order, dated Nov. 20, also detailed problems of the human kind. According to the order: DeKalb sewer employees claimed a raw sewage spill in southwest DeKalb never reached a tributary of the South River and therefore did not need to be reported to the state. But the state had photographs, taken by a county soil and water conservation supervisor, showing sewage spilling out a manhole and cascading down the creek's bank directly into the stream. DeKalb, in violation of state rules, never reported the spill.
DeKalb officials told the state EPD they had evaluated a problem area in a subdivision near Northlake Mall where residents had reported frequent raw sewage spills. But when the state asked for work orders to prove it, "EPD was then advised by the county that the work had not been done."
EPD found DeKalb failed to post signs of a 1,100-gallon spill into a tributary of Shoals Creek near Shoal Creek Park just outside Decatur. Signs are supposed to be posted for seven days to warn people to keep their children and pets out of contaminated creeks. The EPD investigator noted "a significant accumulation of solids (including blood worms and sludge worms) in the creek."
Barnes and Stogner said the incidents were isolated. "We responded to their concerns about reporting and signage and so forth," Barnes said. As for the photos showing the non-reported spill flowing into a South River tributary, Barnes said "The one incident out of 100 is definitely not typical."
Ex-workers claim cover-up
Others disagree. According to two former DeKalb County compliance inspectors who worked six months in the county's sewer department, the county had a history of hiding information about sewage spills from the state and its own employees. Daisy Abdur-Rahman and Ryan Petty, both hired in late summer 2004, were fired by the county in March 2005 for failing the "working test" during their probationary period, according to DeKalb's personnel records . But both say the real reason they were fired was because they were whistle-blowers who protested DeKalb's failure to properly report and fix sewage spills in violation of the federal Clean Water Act. The two have since filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor seeking reinstatement in their jobs, back pay, lost benefits and additional "monetary relief."
DeKalb officials would not respond directly to the employees' charges. The county's personnel records show no blemishes for either before their termination letters. Abdur-Rahman, 29, and Petty, 35, responded to sewage spills and worked on the county's anti-grease ordinance. They allege the county's misdeeds included failure to report some spills and underestimating the amount of sewage spilled for those that were reported to the state.
The number and size of the spills determine how big the state fines will be. DeKalb's largest spill in the consent order — 10 million gallons last January blamed on equipment malfunction — accounted for $50,000 of the $265,875 fine. With only two exceptions for high-performing Cobb and Gwinnett counties, metro Atlanta's cities and counties are fined by the state EPD for every sewage spill. The zero-tolerance policy is to protect the region's already polluted urban rivers and streams. Most metro Atlantans depend on the Chattahoochee River for their drinking water as well as to dispose of treated wastewater.
Abdur-Rahman and Petty said they investigated sewage spills in south DeKalb that appeared larger than the amount reported to the state based on the erosion left behind. When they asked how the sizes of the spills were calculated, their supervisors John Walker and Chester Gudewicz told them they were "ruffling too many feathers" and they needed to learn how to do things "DeKalb's way," according to the complaint.
Abdur-Rahman, a Georgia Tech engineering graduate, said she investigated a spill near South DeKalb Mall that was never reported to the state. She said Gudewicz told her to blame the sewage overflow on grease from several nearby restaurants, even though her inspection showed the fault lay with the county's broken infrastructure.
In an interview in their attorneys' office, Abdur-Rahman and Petty, who held a similar job with the Atlanta sewer department, said their supervisors told them they were being "too scientific" and "too thorough" when they asked for the county's history of sewage spills, to locate problem areas. They said they were denied access to the reports, even though they are public information.
"They were afraid of a scientific look at what was going on," Abdur-Rahman said. She blamed lack of maintenance and inadequate plumbing in fast-developing areas for the bulk of the sewer overflows.
In a written response, DeKalb County Attorney William Linkous said, "It is unfortunate that certain former employees in the Water & Sewer Department who were lawfully terminated from employment have brought baseless claims against DeKalb County. It appears that they are now attempting [to] use the media to prop up their claims at the expense of taxpayers."
Time for big spending?
Despite the mounting fines, DeKalb is not planning any major improvements to existing sewer lines. DeKalb officials say they're spending enough on their sewers. The annual maintenance budget is between $12 million and $13 million, Barnes said. The next big-ticket project — at a cost of between $600 million and $700 million — will more than double the capacity of the two sewage treatment plants over the next six years to handle the county's continued growth, Barnes said. As for the pipes, Barnes said, "We have a very aggressive program where we rehabilitate many thousands of feet of sewer on a yearly basis. ... The DeKalb County system is one of the best maintained systems in the metro area."
Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, the non-profit environmental advocacy group that sued Atlanta over its sewage spills in 1995, questions Barnes' assessment. She said $12 million to $13 million a year does not appear to be nearly enough to fix aging, leaking, clogged and broken sewers. "What we learned with Atlanta is you can't keep patching it. You have to install new pipe, and that costs a lot of money," said Bethea, who also serves on the state Board of Natural Resources, a position appointed by the governor that sets environmental policies and rules for the state. "Knowing what I know about the cost of fixing complicated urban sewer [DeKalb's investment] sounds like it's fairly piecemeal."
DeKalb has about 2,500 miles of sewer pipes. Atlanta, by comparison, has about 1,600 miles. Bethea said the original estimate to overhaul Atlanta's pipes was $1 billion before costs escalated.
Donald Murray, chairman of the South DeKalb Neighborhoods Coalition and an elected supervisor on the DeKalb County Soil and Water Conservation District, said DeKalb has not done nearly enough to fix all the problems in the sewer system, and the EPD is letting the county get away with it. "If we're going to throw Band-Aids [at the problems] and pay hundreds of thousands in fines that is money that should be going to upgrades, we really have to address the situation," Murray said. "We are interested in getting a complete study of this operation. ... Meanwhile, we are somewhat apprehensive of another rainy event."
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