The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Chicken processor sues city in fight over water bill
Gold Creek Foods takes Dawsonville to court over costs.
A Georgia chicken pro- cessor has taken the city of Dawsonville to court in its yearslong fight against what it says are illegal water and sewer costs that threaten to shut er one of its factories and put 400 people out of work.
Gold Creek Foods, which claims to be one of the country’s largest “full-service” chicken processors, filed a lawsuit in a Georgia federal court Friday
instthe city and its mayor, council members, manager and utilities director.
The business says it’s been slapped with more than $1.5 million in illegally assessed surcharges, penal ies and costs since October 2022 alone as a result of the city’s botched testing of wastewa er from its Dawsonvi le plant. The 91-page
suit aims to stop the city from enforcing the charges and shutting off water and sewer services to the plant.
Gold Creek CEO Mark Sose- bee said the city has refused to work with the business, a “committed community part- ner,” to find a solution.
“We’ve invested millions of dollars in this facility to ensure environmental com- pliance, and we’re dedicated to providing a great environment for our employees and, of course, clean wa er for this community,” Sosebee said in an April 12 press release. “The actions of the city of Dawsonville are very disappointing.”
City leaders did not imme- diately respond to questions about the dispute.
Dawsonvi le, about 50 mi es north of Atlanta, has been home to the GoldCreek poul- try processing plant since 2004. Gold Creek has seven other Georgia facilities, in Gainesville.
Gold Creek said its Dawsonville site employs 402 people and operates 24 hours a day between five and seven days
ek. The plant processes about 3.4 million pounds of poultry and uses about 181,000 gallons of wa er each week. Product from the plant
cluding tenders, nuggets, fil- lets and strips, is consumed by people throughout Geor- gia and elsewhere, per the complaint.
At the heart of the dispute is Gold Creek’s industrial wastewater. The business said it treats the plant’s wastewater before it is discharged to Dawsonville’s public sewer and wastewater collection system, in compliance with a permit from the Environmental Protection Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
Gold Creek said it spent about $1 million on a wastewater treatment facility in 2018 to meet the state’s “very gh standards.” It said its own
ekly testing shows wastewater discharges are in compliance with the permit.
The business said it also discharges sewage to Dawsonville’s public system, for which it does not need a permit.It claimsthe city has been testing the plant’s wastewater at a point where it mingles with sewage, leading to skewed results upon which the city has wrongly based penalties for wastewa er ordinance violations.
“Defendants are improperly using a threat of disruption of water and sewer service as leverage in an attempt to force Gold Creek to pay exorbitant, illegal and unwarranted surcharges, penalties and costs,” the lawsuit states.
Gold Creek says Dawsonville has a monopoly on city wa er and sewer services, for which it is the only industrial customer.