CHATSWORTH, Ga. (WDEF)- Opposition continues to grow in Murray County to a proposed biowaste facility.
It was a full house at the Cloer Barn in Chatsworth as numerous residents came out to voice their concerns regarding a proposed anaerobic digestion facility at a town hall Thursday evening.
This town hall was ahead of the required public hearing held by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD).
That facility would be located in the southern part of Murray County off of Barry-Bennett Road, and would be built by Vanguard Renewables, a subsidiary of BlackRock.
Vanguard previously told News 12 that this facility would recycle food and beverage waste into renewable natural gas and low-carbon fertilizer.
However, residents say they were only made aware of the project last month, and are concerned about its environmental impact.
Resident Charles Mulkey said, “I’m 62. By the time all the contaminants from this reach me and where I live, I’ll probably be gone. What about the children, and the ones yet to be born?”
University of Tennessee Professor Sarah D’Onofrio gave a presentation explaining the proposal and what its impacts could be.
She raised a variety of issues that could come with it including impacts on waterways, traffic issues, and increased fire danger among other issues.
D’Onofrio asked, “What happens if this digestate seeps through the ground and gets into the waterways? Because that’s not covered under the EPD permit.”
These questions and more are fresh in the mind of residents like Cody Spence and Natalie Bouckaert.
Spence, who we spoke to right after he and other residents found out about this plan, said of his family’s cattle farm a mile from the proposed plant site, “We bought this property in hopes we were going to be there for a long time, and that we would never have to deal with anything like this.”
Bouckaert added, “I really love this area. I love to swim in the rivers… I am scared of what this will do to the water. The smell will be awful. The amount of trucks, 60 a day, there’s no way that road can handle that.”
These residents are now preparing for that required public hearing on December 4, in which Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene is expected to attend as she has voiced opposition to the project on social media.
After that hearing, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division will have the final say on if this project will be allowed to move forward.
For the time being, the community is banding together, as over 9,000 have signed the petition against this facility.
Mulkey said, “I was really proud of the amount of people that came from the community. I hope even more show up to the public hearing, maybe the entire county.”
Resident Cindy Roberson added, “People who live here paid for this. Organized this. This is somebody’s karaoke machine. So yes we can do it.”
That public meeting will be held on Thursday, December 4 at 6 p.m. at the Murray County Recreation Department at 651 Hyden-Tyler Road in Chatsworth.
