Michael Moody has always been around kayaks, whether it was building them at 13 years old or owning Broad River Outpost, a kayaking and canoeing business on the Broad River, for more than 43 years.
However, a proposed chicken rendering plant in the Franklin County town of Franklin Springs could impact the Broad River’s “pristine” condition, according to local supporters.
Moody, who co-founded the Broad River Watershed Association and lives in the Glade Community, said the potential plant “keeps him up at night.”
“(The quality of the water) makes a big difference,” he said. “Would you want to come to the river and think about dying because you barely swallowed a drop of water?”
The Broad River is among the last free-flowing rivers in Georgia, according to the Broad River Watershed Association, and impacts Oglethorpe County, among many other Northeast Georgia counties and communities. It also provides a variety of recreational activities and is home to more than 60 species.
“You're talking about the environment. This is not political,” said Leslie Pope, the founder of Save Broad River. “It doesn’t matter if you’re red or blue. We all love to be in the water.”
The Oglethorpe County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution at its meeting earlier this month to support Franklin County and other area counties against the proposed plant.
University of Georgia ecology professor and researcher Amy Rosemond said if the state wants “recreational opportunities and drinking water available for future generations,” protecting the Broad River from the poultry plant is of the utmost importance.
The discharge from the poultry rendering plant, “would be pretty awful,” she said.
All organic substances are broken down in water by available oxygen, but when the oxygen is used up, the pollutants are no longer able to be broken down and lead to “nutrient pollution,” which is a disruptive increase in nutrient levels, in the form of algal blooms.
“What people can visualize most are these harmful algal blooms that are developing in a lot of our drinking water sources, and so that's where nutrient pollution is a huge problem,” Rosemond said.
Not only could the impacts from the plant result in algae growth, the pollution from it could impact Franklin Springs via smell.
“Those poor people in Franklin Springs are gonna get gassed out,” Moody said.
The Broad River is a segment of the extensive network of rivers and streams that make up the Savannah River Basin, one of the largest in the state. It drains over 10,500 square miles of land, according to the UGA River Basin Center.
Franklin County’s location near the top of the Broad River would create problems in places downstream, including Oglethorpe County.
“To put anything in the headwaters is a huge problem because that pollution goes all the way downstream,” Rosemond said. “We have to make sure that the pollution is controlled before it gets downstream.”
Moody said the pollution would “kill a lot of the fish species” in the Broad River.
Pope said it is dire for people to be “educated” about the decisions being made in local, state and federal governments concerning water and natural resources, highlighting the importance of public input.
“Let the water unite us,” Pope said. “What if this is the one national movement that we actually could join together in political parties and say, all differences aside, ‘let’s protect our waters.' ”
“Things aren't reversible in many cases, and so until we get things better, we can't continue to make them worse,” Rosemond said.