BLAIRSVILLE, Ga – In a unanimous vote, Blairsville City Council decided to halt all leachate related-contracts and remove the chemicals from the waste treatment facility.

Citing the concern of the mayor and council, Mayor Jim Conley, made a motion to discontinue the leachate processing contract. All present councilmembers accepted the contract dissolution.

Councilmember Mary Ruth Cook asked about the remaining leachate currently in the wastewater treatment facility. Wastewater Treatment Facility Manager Jody Cook responded that around 3,000 gallons of the chemical waste remained at the plant. It was currently being moved through digestors and dewatered. However, it would not go back into the system. Once complete, Blairsville Wastewater Treatment Plant is finished with leachate.

Background Information

Blairsville Wastewater Treatment Facility began accepting leachate from the The Water Authority (TWA) in June 2019. Leachate is landfill municipal waste runoff that generates from liquids present in waste and outside water, such as rainfall. It must be properly treated before being discharged back into a water system.

TWA approached Blairsville about receiving leachate for processing because the wastewater plant could accommodate the runoff. The plant’s tank had extra capacity, so the city agreed to accept the waste for processing. As part of the contract, TWA paid the city of Blairsville by the gallon.

Leachate, as illustrated here, collects at the bottom of landfills and requires processing before going into any water source.

The company serves as a transporter of leachate from landfills to treatment facilities across the state. TWA is partly owned by State Senator Steve Gooch, who represents Union, Fannin, Lumpkin, White, Gilmer, and Dawson counties.

Lake Nottely Improvement Association (LNIA) began protesting the leachate process last year first appearing at the September 2019 Blairsville City Council to voice displeasure. Mayor Jim Conley and Wastewater Treatment Manager assured the group that the water being released Lake Nottely passed EPD tests, including the PFAS test. Testing documents that Fetch Your News acquired in 2019 demonstrated that PFAS levels weren’t an issue in Lake Nottely even with the addition of leachate.

Fast forward to July 2020, LNIA continued to research the issue with chemical engineers, case studies, EPD, TWA, Gooch, and others. They discussed findings at two county commission meetings and one city council meeting. However, the county held zero responsibility for the leachate decision as the city managed the wastewater treatment facility and the TWA contract. Additionally, Lake Nottely is the property of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA); it’s not a county-owned lake.

Also, since the water continued to the chemical waste tests for PFAS, the county didn’t have a legitimate reason to step in. The decision to continue with leachate processing or suspend the contract sat squarely on Blairsville’s shoulders.

In the July 2020 City Council meeting, Wastewater Treatment Manager explained that they would never treat more than 11,000 gallons of leachate a day. Also, that the notice of a water treatment permit from the EPD wasn’t related to the leachate. It was part of the standard permit renewal process, which is required every five years.

However, on August 28, Mountain True Western Regional Director Callie Moore agreed that more extensive metals testing could be performed in Lake Nottely. Some of the concerns raised by LNIA about activity in the narrow corridor of Lake Nottely gave her reason to believe that MountainTrue might need to test for different types of pollutants. These new samplings won’t include a PFAS test because EPD continues to show that these aren’t an issue.