Wastewater plant cited for polluting Chattahoochee
City of Atlanta has been tagged by state environmental regulators for a litany of violations at its largest wastewater treatment plant, including discharging poorly treatedeffluent with high levels of E. coli, ammonia and phosphorus into the Chattahoochee River.
The notice of violations — and arelated report from an inspection by Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) regulators last month — reveal major issues at the facility, from broken equipment to plant growth and”solids” on the walls of some treatment basins. Local riverkeepers, meanwhile, say they are still finding alarming levels of bacteria where the plant empties into the Chattahoochee near Atlanta Road.
Jason Ulseth, the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper’s executive director, said they are recommending that anyone planning to paddle, swim or fish on the river limit contact with water along the 70-mile stretch between the facility’s outfall and West Point Lake near LaGrange.
“It’s hit-or-miss right now, so we are advising people to stay out,” Ulseth said.
At the center of the problems is the R.M. Clayton Water Reclamation Center, located in northwest Atlanta near a bend in the Chattahoochee River. The facility, one of the largest of its kind in the Southeast, is permitted to discharge as much as 100 million gallons of treated wastewater every day into the river.
But there are limits to how much bacteria and other compounds can be left in the wastewater when it’s released into the river. Contact with water containing high levels of E.coli and other sewagebornepathogens can lead to serious illness, while ammonia and phosphorus can feed algae blooms and cause fish kills.
The R.M. Clayton facility’s wastewater discharges have failed to meet state and federal standards dozens of times since last July, according to a March 22 letter sent by EPD notifying the City of Atlanta of the violations. The letter was addressed to Commissioner Mikita Browning, who leads Atlanta’s Department of Watershed Management.
In the letter, EPD officials say levels of E. coli, fecal coliform, ammonia, phosphorus and more in the facility’s wastewater discharges into the river, exceeded the allowable limits 48 times between July 2023 and February. The plant is required to tell EPD about violations within 24 hours of learning of them, but failed to do so, the letter says.
Over that same time, R.M. Clayton also reported 21 outfall spills with levels of “suspended solids,” a measure used to gauge particle content in wastewater, that were above permitted limits.But the problems at the plant did not stop in February.
Just last month, the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper detected concentrations of “colony forming” units of E. coli around the facility’s outfall that were north of 120,000 units per 100 milliliters. That’s more than 950 times higher than what the EPA says is safe for swimming and other recreation.