Former President Jimmy Carter has asked Bill Gates, one of the principal holders of waste disposal company Republic Services, to help halt the company's plan to dump millions of tons of coal ash at a Wayne County landfill.

Carter handwrote a note to the Microsoft founder in late June at the behest of Dink NeSmith, a Jesup native and president of Community Newspapers Inc. NeSmith said he just recently received permission from Carter to publish his note to Gates, and he provided it to the Times-Union.

NeSmith has been at the forefront of a growing battle to stop Republic Services' plan to import millions of tons of contaminated coal ash from Duke Energy's power plants in North Carolina for disposal at its Broadhurst Environmental Landfill.

NeSmith reminded Carter of his youth when he visited the area with his father.

"
President Carter, as a boy, fished in the Little Satilla River,'' NeSmith told the Times-Union.

The Little Satilla -- as locals call the blackwater creek -- rises in Jeff Davis County and flows past Screven on its way to the Satilla River. The Broadhurst landfill is just east of Screven and south of Jesup.

In his June 28 note, Carter understates Republic's plans as the dumping of "100 rail carloads of toxic coal ash" in Wayne County. That's actually the amount per day over an extended period.

"This will adversely impact some favorite streams of mine, where my father took me fishing many years ago,'' Carter wrote. "I hope you will help prevent this ...."

NeSmith, who owns land bordered by the Altamaha River and Penholloway Creek, said the coal ash should be buried somewhere but not in Wayne County or any place like it.

"The watery ecosystem of Southeast Georgia is not the place to put it,'' he said.

Duke is looking for a disposal site because the North Carolina legislature passed the Coal Ash Management Act in 2014 requiring Duke Energy to close all its coal ash ponds, said
Mike Rusher, communications director for Environmental Protection in North Carolina.

Duke has 10 years, starting in 2019, to close all 33 impoundments at 14 sites where 150 million tons of coal ash is stored, Rusher said.

COAL ASH DOESN'T

HAVE TO LEAVE N.C.

State Sen.
William Ligon, R-St. Simons, said last week that the legislative delegation from the area are all protective of the Floridan aquifer, the main source of drinking water in Southeast Georgia, and are looking at possible impact from coal ash. Ligon also wondered why Georgia has to take North Carolina's coal ash.

Rusher said coal ash doesn't have to leave North Carolina.

"There's no mandate, or even a recommendation, to ship it out of state,'' Rusher said.

Duke has the option of opening its own lined landfills, but there is a mandate to set up three recycling facilities that will have to recycle 300,000 tons yearly for safe reuse likely in concrete and asphalt, Rusher said.

Jesup resident
Neill Herring said he believes Duke is looking at the quickest way to meet the requirements of North Carolina law.

"They are willing to pay the shipping cost and the tonnage fee to be shed of it,'' he said.

Herring, who handles legislative affairs for the Sierra Club in Georgia, said the state needs laws on where coal ash can be buried.

"The legislature could require standards based on where [the coal ash] is going to be put,'' he said. "If it's easy to get into the water supply, those sites would score lower."

Herring thinks there is time to get that legislation passed and that lawmakers, alarmed that Georgia could become a dumping ground for other states' coal ash, will begin introducing bills as soon as the General Assembly convenes in January.

CORPS OF ENGINEERS TAKES TIME ON RULING

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is taking its time in ruling on an application for a permit for a rail yard at Broadhurst to handle coal ash trains. Corps permission is needed because wetlands would be affected.

But recently, Broadhurst has withdrawn an application to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division to expand the landfill while indicating it reserves the right to reapply, Herring said.

Both Herring and NeSmith said a county ordinance, not state or federal law, may stop Broadhurst from burying any contaminated material.

The Wayne County Commission adopted an ordinance in 2000 forbidding any such development on wetlands. The last paragraph of the county's wetlands protection regulations prohibits the issuance of any permit for:

-- Receiving areas for toxic or hazardous waste or other contaminants.

-- Hazardous or sanitary waste landfills.

Before it can issue a permit to Broadhurst, "EPD is required to get a sworn statement no local land use ordinance is being violated,'' Herring said.

Herring said there is no question Republic's plans would violate the ordinance.

NeSmith said the ordinance was in place five years before Wayne County signed a contract for Republic to take over the landfill from the county's Solid Waste Authority.

"It's time to stand up and say this ordinance was written in 2000. It supercedes the 2005 agreement,'' NeSmith said.

Although the EPA decided in October that coal ash is not hazardous, opponents argue that it is because it contains arsenic, mercury, cadmium, lead and other heavy metals. As Herring says, "these hazardous substances can leak out of this harmless coal ash."

The EPD held a public hearing in Brunswick last week on changes in the regulations that would allow power companies in Georgia to dispose of their own coal ash in Coal Combustion Residual Units, or CCRs. About 150 people were in Brunswick's old city hall for the meeting and one speaker described the range of contaminants in coal ash as "the periodic table."

The rules for CCRs are more stringent than those for municipal or commercial landfills, and many residents said they want the more restrictive rules to apply to landfills like Broadhurst.

NeSmith spoke at the meeting and held up a piece of the thin plastic liner that would keep those contaminants from leaking into the groundwater.

That liner will surely fail and the contaminants will get into the groundwater all the way from Broadhurst to the Atlantic, he said.

"I've got cypress trees growing in my swamp that were there when Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, and we want to put our trust in that thin plastic liner?'' NeSmith said.

Terry Dickson: (912) 264-0405

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