Tuesday night during the Georgia EPD’s second public meeting this year at Southeast Bulloch High School on Bulloch and Bryan counties’ permit applications for four big wells to supply water to Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, state scientists invited a well driller to speak.

Officially, the first meeting on Feb. 26 was an information meeting on a draft of special conditions for the permits. Tuesday’s 6-9 p.m. session was the public info meeting, followed by the public comment hearing, on the draft permits, released in early July. About 250 people filled the auditorium of the school near Brooklet, and many stayed for all three hours.

The Environmental Protection Division’s findings that effects on other local wells are likely to be minimal and its requirement for a county-operated mitigation fund for home and farm well owners were met by doubt-laced questions and some heckling during the presentation, and statements of deep skepticism and outright opposition during the hearing portion.

At the February meeting, EPD scientists revealed a prediction, based in hydrological modeling, that the Hyundai wells, if operated at the combined requested permits capacity of 6.625 million gallons per day (mgd), would drop the water level in the Floridan aquifer no more than 19 feet nearest the wells and about 10 feet five miles away.

The well driller who spoke was Pete Peterson from Guyton, who has been in the business for 43 years and does some work in southeastern Bulloch County. He is active in the Georgia Association of Water Professionals and said he had talked to other well drillers in the area about the topic.

“If the model is correct, we expect a minimum impact on deep wells, on properly installed deep wells, OK?” he said, interrupted by someone in the audience saying, “If the model is correct!”

“And folks,” Peterson continued, “your deep well is not going to go dry.”

Saltwater intrusion is not an issue, Peterson added, citing the Coastal Sound Science five-year study but also that “none of the drillers here have hit any salt water in Bulloch County or Bryan County.”

If the submersible pump in a well does have to be lowered by 40 feet, the cost would typically be in the $900-$1,200 range. But if an older well has to be replaced with a new well, the cost could be $12,000 to $15,000, he said.

Usual threshold 30 feet

The 19-foot drawdown projection is based on all four wells proposed by Bulloch and Bryan County operating at maximum capacity, noted Georgia EPD Geologist Christine Voudy, PhD.

“That’s at permit capacity, so if they are (pumping) 24/7 at the permit limits for over 6 million gallons per day, that’s what that column would look like,” Voudy said “We have a 30-foot drawdown metric that’s usually what concerns us.”

In other words, the maximum predicted drop for the counties’ four wells is about 11 feet less than the threshold that usually raises the EPD’s concern about issuing a permit.

Again, the drop in the water level was near the “cone of depression” center in the middle of a five-mile radius of the I-16 and Georgia Highway 119 interchange, near where the four big wells are proposed to be drilled. The zone is “kind of like a funnel” with the drawdown of water level reduced toward the edges, she observed..

“Many times when someone installs a well, they will install the pump for that well at between, you know, 30 and 60 feet below the static water level,” Voudy said. “So we have the 30-foot drawdown metric because we don’t want someone that they have a well that’s been operating just fine over time, and then their neighbor came in and installed a well and pulled the water level below their pump. Their pump will go bad.”

Mitigation fund

So, the mitigation fund, to be overseen by the Bryan County and Bulloch County governments and required by the EPD as a condition for the permits, is meant to compensate residential and agricultural well owners if they have to fix a problem, by lowering or replacing a pump or redrilling a well, in at least of five-mile radius of that center point.

Although the counties have only a memorandum of understanding for the compensation program and not yet a detailed plan, $1 million has now been committed to fund it. This includes $250,000 each from the Development Authority of Bulloch County, the Development Authority of Bryan County, the Savannah Harbor-Interstate 16 Joint Development Authority and Hyundai Motor Group.

“I’m really worried about these new wells that are pumping out so much more water that it makes sense to me that we could have more saltwater intrusion in our wells at home,” one Bulloch County woman said from the audience.

Wei Zheng, Ph.D., the EPD’s Water Supply Program manager, reiterated that there is no evidence of saltwater intrusion occurring in Bulloch County or Bryan County. Bryan County is in the “yellow zone” where new permits for large wells are still prohibited, which is why Bryan County’s two wells, as well as Bulloch’s two, would be drilled just inside southeastern Bulloch, which is in the green zone, near the county line.

But the red, yellow and green zones are part of a longstanding strategy to prevent saltwater intrusion that occurs on the outer coast, such as a Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Reductions in pumping from the aquifer, which were required in the red zone, such as at Savannah, have resulted in about a 40-foot rise in the aquifer there since the 1970s, Voudy noted.

But the EPD scientists acknowledged that a drop of 0.2 to 0.5 feet (2.4-6.0 inches) in the water level of wells as far away as Hilton Head is projected from the Hyundai wells drawdown. The special conditions for the permits also include a requirement that the wells be replaced with an alternative water source, such as surface water, possibly from the Savannah River, within 25 years.

One of the EPD’s slides contained a “perspective” statement comparing the four wells, together proposed for maximum pumping capacity of 6.625 mgd, to large agricultural wells that may draw 1,000 gallons per minute. If such a well operated 24 hours a day, that would amount to 1.44 mgd, or more than one-fifth the capacity of the four Hyundai wells. But farmers present pointed out that irrigation wells are not used every day of the year.

Public comments

Many of the comments spoken aloud and taken down during the hearing were in outright opposition to the wells, such as those from Lawton Sack and Tim Powell, who are active in the Bulloch Action Coalition. The BAC is now mounting a petition drive for referendums to repeal the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners’ approval of both an intergovernmental agreement with Bryan County on well and water services and the preliminary agreement for the well mitigation fund.

But other citizens had specific questions. Ken Copi, a retired metallurgical engineer who lives in Bryan County about a mile from the nearest Hyundai well site, said he appreciates facts and wants more.

“We’ve all heard how many gallons they’re going to use,” he said. “What is it going to be used for? Cooling water, process water, or housing drinking wells? What is it going to be used for, and whatever the use is, there should be ways to mitigate.”

Cooling water or purified water from manufacturing processes could be reused multiple times, he said.

Damon Mullis, executive director of Ogeechee Riverkeeper, gave spoken remarks before the environmental organization files detailed comments in writing.

“As the region grows and industry comes in and the population grows, we’re going to have to rely more on surface water. …,” Mullis said.

Ogeechee Riverkeeper is asking the EPD to deny the permits, but if they are granted, the group wants the timeline for the required shift to surface water to be shortened from 25 years to 10.

“Industries are being allowed to use the pristine, clean, aquifer water while citizens are having to rely more and more on river water for drinking,” Mullis said. “This pristine water should be prioritized for drinking and food production, and industry should have to rely on surface water, not the other way around.”