Key Points:
• Water samples collected by volunteers helped track 300-plus sewer spills since the program began.
• The Chattahoochee Riverkeeper’s Neighborhood Watch program attempts to cover 434 river miles.
Volunteers have helped the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper find more than 300 sewer spills across the 434 miles of the Chattahoochee River through its Neighborhood Water Watch program.
“We’re just looking out for the Chattahoochee River and its tributaries. We want to make sure we have enough clean water in there for now and future generations is kind of our mission statement,” Mike Meyer, director of the Neighborhood Water Watch program, told members of the Greenspace Leaders Alliance on Sept. 26.
The Greenspace Leaders Alliance met at Morgan Falls Overlook Park. They included representatives from the Sandy Springs Conservancy, the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Dunwoody Nature Center, Chattahoochee Nature Center, the Parks and Recreation Coalition of Brookhaven, and the Cobb County Parks Department.
Meyer said more than 200 volunteers collect water samples from the Chattahoochee River and its tributaries. He said that they could use more volunteers to monitor and akes and watershed.
A short training session prepares volunteers to collect water samples. Though he prefers weekly water samples, Meyer said he’d welcome monthly collections as they still provide data about the river.
The volunteers take their water samples to collection stations. The closest location to Sandy Springs is the Chattahoochee Nature Center at 9135 Willeo Road in Roswell. Other drop-off sites are in Mableton, Clarkesville, Columbus, Gainesville, and LaGrange.
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The water testing checks for E. coli. That species of fecal coliform bacteria comes from the intestinal tracts of humans and warm-blooded animals.
“The E. coli can tell you if there are nasty, overflowing sewer spills, if there are broken pipes, if there are plants going offline. The E. coli can tell you a wonderful amount of things about our health risks in an instant,” Meyer said.
The Clean Water Act enables the riverkeeper to hold people and organizations accountable. The nonprofit organization sued the City of Atlanta for its failure to prevent overflows from its sewage and stormwater system, and for not preventing sewage spills from its R.M. Clayton wastewater treatment plant.
It’s not only sewage that causes problems. Construction of parking lots and buildings turns huge areas of forests into large concrete expanses that don’t absorb water.
“That means that water comes off these surfaces and rips through our streets, rips through the creeks, and blows out stream banks, brings in hot water, brings in all sorts of stuff on the surface. So that’s one of the big things that we track,” Meyer said.
The riverkeeper wants people to contact them if they spot construction sites with sediment flowing out of them, or if they see dead fish flopping along the stream or river, Meyer said.
Some of the more than 300 sewage spills found by the riverkeepers included a spill into Marsh Creek at Abernathy and Roswell Roads. An old 30-foot iron pipe had degraded, causing the spill.
Another sewage spill was discovered a few weeks before the Fourth of July holiday in 2023 when high levels of bacteria set off alarm bells. The Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area also reported high levels of bacteria.
By testing water collected upstream and downstream from where a water sample tested positive for E. coli, the spill site was found. The riverkeeper found sewage flowing out of a pipe on the river bottom from the Big Creek Wastewater Reclamation Plant. Fulton County runs the plant, but its operators didn’t know this problem had existed for months.
The unsafe bacteria levels caused the Riverkeeper and the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area to shut down that section of the river for 19 days. Meyer said that was the first time that had ever happened.
In 2024, the Riverkeeper found a problem in the river near Atlanta’s R.M. Clayton plant. Bacteria levels were 1,000 times higher than the EPA safety recommendations.
Visit the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper’s website for more information and to learn how to volunteer.