Four local Georgia areas have made the annual Dirty Dozen List produced by the Georgia Water Coalition.
It highlights the worst offenses to Georgia’s water, with a third of the violations in Southeast Georgia’s backyards, including the Golden Ray shipwreck in St. Simons Sound, Okefenokee Swamp mining, Brunswick groundwater pollution and coastal sea-level rise.
VIEW: 2021 Dirty Dozen Report
Okefenokee Swamp
Back on the list for another year is a proposed sand mine near the Okefenokee Swamp that threatens the future of the wetlands.
Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division will soon decide whether to issue environmental permits for a controversial proposal to strip the eastern half of the park boundary for titanium.
Stakeholders are concerned an approval would open the door to larger projects around the unique ecosystem and lead to more frequent and severe wildfires and impact recreation and tourism in Charlton, Clinch and Ware counties.
Twin Pines Minerals company has repeatedly been denied permits to mine the area since 2019. The latest permit request is to mine a demonstration project of 582 acres of land less than four miles from the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
Golden Ray shipwreck
The country’s most expensive salvage operation has removed all signs of the Golden Ray shipwreck in St. Simons Sound, but are the environmental impacts wiped away?
Oil and debris leaked into the Sound during the cleanup, which took more than two years, and Georgia’s Water Coalition wants politicians to request a thorough assessment of the long-term impacts to the environment.
The group says environmental response plans were not adequate and advocates that for a more comprehensive long-term plan through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to monitor the disaster impacts on the Sound.
Brunswick’s polluted groundwater
One of Brunswick’s busy commercial districts along the Golden Isles Parkway has polluted groundwater containing toxic benzene at levels 70 times the maximum contaminant level goal outlined by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The pollution stems from a decades-old Hercules pesticide plant, which is now a 16-acre Superfund site. In October, Hercules released new groundwater monitoring data that reinforced EPA’s long-term analysis. Pollutant levels found in monitoring wells located on adjacent property indicated that the 40-year-old pollution problem is ongoing.
Local residents want the EPA to force Hercules to do more about cleaning up Benzene, which is carcinogenic and can evaporate into the air and harm people’s nervous systems.
Climate change
For the first time in the report’s history, climate change has made the list.
Warmer temperatures are impacting coastal Georgia with a documented rise in sea levels with more frequent flooding. The heat is worsening pollution problems due to harmful algal blooms in fresh and saltwater.
The group says Georgia elected officials are quiet on the issue and have not embraced changes to lower emissions or make communities more resilient from the threat.
Scientists predict that by 2050, Georgians will experience more than four times the number of heat wave days than they did at the turn of the century.