Residents have been raising a stink for years about odors from a private sewer system in the exclusive Olde Atlanta Club in south Forsyth County.
Now county officials have gone to the state attorney general and Environmental Protection Division to try and get relief.
Forsyth officials said the company running the system has refused to give them access to the plant to inspect it and track down the source of the smells. But John Stover, general counsel for Utilities Inc., the Chicago-based company that owns UOG Treatment Plant and Ponds, said Friday said that according to state law only the EPD -- not the county -- has access to the plant.
Kevin Chambers, spokesman for the EPD, said Friday "there is no law that gives local government access to privately owned wastewater treatment plants."
Stover also said the plant has passed every annual inspection by the EPD since Utilities Inc. bought the plant in 2002, and as recently as January of this year.
"We are in compliance and feel like we are operating the plant properly," Stover said. He added that the company has received only three complaints about smells from the facility: one in 2009, none in 2010 and two in recent weeks.
The dispute, which started with an exchange of letters in January between Stover and county attorney Ken Jarrard, has grown more heated in recent weeks.
The company’s recent rate hike has “added to the problem,” said County Commission Chairman Brian Tam, who represents District 2 and has taken the lead in resolving the issue.
“We’ve had a problem down there for a long time, but it seems to have grown for the past several months,” Tam said. The neighborhood and golf course are in his district.
Ten days ago he and county Water & Sewer Department Director Tim Perkins met with the attorney general's office and environmental experts from the EPD to find out if they had any legal or environmental recourse in gaining access to the plant.
Lauren Kane, spokeswoman for the attorney general, said an attorney from the office only sat in with the EPD as a "facilitator" of the meeting.
Tam, Jarrard and members of the Olde Atlanta Club home owners association have a scheduled a meeting between county officials, residents and officials of Utilities Inc. Monday night at the Olde Atlanta Club clubhouse.
District 2 planning Commissioner Pam Livesay, also the planning commission chair, said residents have complained about the smell, and so have golfers because the treated wastewater is used to irrigate the golf course. “They say it smells like a sewer out there,” Livesay said.
Perkins said determining the source of the smell, even with access, would be difficult, particularly in the case of the golf course, because odors are sometimes generated by fertilizer and chemicals used to treat the ground, not necessarily the irrigation water.
Stover said his company is eager to resolve the issue and determine the source of odor, which he said could be storage ponds on the golf course, which hold treated water that if not maintained properly can produce bad smells.
"We do not manage those ponds," he said. "The golf course does."
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