Conservancy Opposes Proposed South Georgia Landfill

In bureaucratic parlance, the proposed project is known as DRI #2189.

In plain English, it’s a landfill – a 268-acre solid waste facility in northern Bryan County, about an hour’s drive northwest of Savannah.

The proposed landfill is part of a 1,137 acre-tract that is rich with biodiversity. The land, near Ellabelle, includes rare and threatened habitats, from wetlands to hardwood forests, and features a major tributary of the Ogeechee River. The Georgia Conservancy is fighting to stop this project because of the great risks it poses to the area’s critical habitats.

Atlantic Waste Services, Inc., the developers of the proposed landfill, has asked Bryan County officials to rezone the property from agricultural to waste management to accommodate their project. The company says the project will provide an economic jolt to the area, but according to Atlantic Waste’s own marketing materials, just 8-14 permanent jobs will be created.

“It makes no sense to jeopardize the long-term health of this critically important ecosystem,” said Beth Blalock, the Georgia Conservancy’s Coastal Land Conservation Program Manager.

The CRC’s draft evaluation of the proposal says building a landfill in Ellabell would violate a number of Bryan County regulations, including provisions that require landfills to be located at least 1,000 feet from any homes and prohibit landfills from being built in wetlands.

This project also shows the value of the ongoing Coastal Georgia Land Conservation Initiative (CGLCI), a collaborative research project that includes the Georgia Conservancy and several other organizations.

CGLCI researchers have spent several years painstakingly mapping the wildlife habitats in an 11-county region on Georgia Coast, including Bryan County. The maps provide never-before seen detail of the types of habitats that exist in the area. A ranking system lets government officials, developers and planners know at a glance which habitats are the most rare and threatened.

The landfill would be built on land that includes several imperiled and vulnerable habitats, including Atlantic Coastal Plain Blackwater River Floodplain, Diamondleaf Oak Bottom Forest and Sandhills Swamp Blackgum.

“Without the CGLCI maps, all we would have been able to say is that the landfill would be built in or near wetlands,” said Blalock. “With the maps, we can pinpoint the fragile and special habitats that would be destroyed.”

UPDATES

January 2012 - Atlantic Waste Appeals Permit Denial

December 2011 - Land Fill Text Amendment Defeated

November 2011 - Landfill Text Amendment Update

October 2011 - Atlantic Waste Seeking to Change Bryan Co. Zoning for Landfill

September 2011 - Georgia Coastal Regional Commission Tables Review of Bryan Co. Landfill Proposal

July 2011 - Conservancy Submits Comment Opposing Bryan County Landfill