Jay Paul, the chair of Oglethorpe County’s Board of Commissioners, participated in a soil amendment panel discussion in Elberton on Sept. 5 that included a showing of a documentary “Georgia's Dirty Little Secret” by the Rural Georgia Protection Alliance. Recent legislation and proposed changes regarding the soil amendment situation affecting rural counties in Georgia were also reviewed.
Paul spoke with The Oglethorpe Echo regarding his takeaways and feelings on the status of soil amendments in Oglethorpe County.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What was the focus of your panel discussion on Tuesday?
A: (We discussed) the latest status on rules and laws that have been proposed and implemented by the Department of Agriculture to hopefully get a better handle on the soil amendment application through Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Warren and other rural counties in the state.
Q: What were your takeaways from the rules that you talked about?
A: It’s hopefully gonna be better than what we’ve been battling for the past 10 or 15 years. I think a lot of it has been unsupervised and unregulated, but I think with the new Department of Agriculture commissioner, there seems to be a movement to put more boots on the ground and keep an eye on this type of thing on the state level.
Q: Is sludge considered a soil amendment?
A: People use the terms interchangeably. Most people call it sludge, and when they try to get more technical, they call it soil amendment, but it’s all essentially the same thing.
Q: Why do you think soil amendments have become such an issue in Georgia?
A: It’s probably more volume being generated, and they don’t know what to do with it or where to take it, so it’s getting more and more spread out. Whereas, it used to be more prevalent up at Banks and Hall County, and Stephens and Franklin, for example, now it’s migrated down through Elbert 15, 14 years ago. I hear reports of Newton County and Walton County getting it, so it just gets more spread out, and more people are being affected by it.
Q: Have you heard anything from residents or other organizations who are trying to do something about soil amendments in Oglethorpe?
A: This coalition of commissioners between myself, Madison, Wilkes, Elbert, Warren and Jefferson — we’ve been working closely with the Savannah River Keepers for years now, I’d say. And we’re thankful to the Savannah River Keepers for trying to help us battle through this. And Rob Leverett (attorney and Georgia state representative) has proposed legislation, and we’re real thankful to him for being involved in this process as well.
Q: Does your coalition of commissioners have any plans to push the soil amendment issue further in any way?
A: Well, we have pushed about as far as we can on the local level. Now, the state ties our hands on this. We adopted an ordinance a few months or so ago that will limit the application of this to where it won’t come within 100 feet of a property line, and that’s about as much as we can do on the local level. We cannot legislate it out of existence. We can’t make the buffers wider than that. Our hands are tied from the state level.