An ongoing controversial construction project in Atlanta for a new training facility for fire and police personnel—nicknamed “Cop City”—highlights what some have characterized as “complicit” actions by the federal government. These allegations are the result of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) removal of a “streamgauge” that measured sediment pollution levels at a creek near the site.
Construction sediment is only the tip of the iceberg as far as opponents of the project are concerned.
The project
The planned training center is being built on a site that previously housed a city-run prison farm. The $90 million Atlanta Public Safety Training Center plans call for a mock city, burn buildings, a K-9 unit kennel and training, firing and explosive ranges, and a driving course for emergency vehicles.
Opposition
The project has faced opposition on multiple fronts since its inception.
Opponents of the project have referred to it as an “urban warfare” training facility for a “militarized police force.”
“Police critics and racial justice activists take issue with the construction of a lavishly funded law enforcement facility ‘after a year of uprisings in which ATL residents were teargassed, tased, and shot with rubber bullets by [the Atlanta Police Department (APD)],’” according to a September 13, 2021, article in Atlanta magazine. “Local advocates worry that the destruction of forest and wetlands could lead to more flooding and worse air quality in surrounding, mostly Black and lower-income neighborhoods in Southeast Atlanta; environmentalists, including the Georgia Chapter of the Nature Conservancy and Sunrise Movement, also object to the razing of 85 acres of trees in the context of the climate emergency, when forests can play a crucial cooling function. Urban planners, including BeltLine designer Ryan Gravel, point out that the facility disrupts another, previous plan for the South River Forest, a 3,500-acre tract of greenspace that is, as [Ryan] Gravel wrote, ‘metro Atlanta’s last chance for a park of this size inside our perimeter highway.’”
Criticism has also included claims that sediment runoff from clear-cutting and construction on the project has caused excessive amounts of sediment to enter Atlanta’s South River, which has already been classified as endangered because of previous sewage spills.
Opponents actively protest at the construction site and are challenging the project with the EPA in federal district court and with the Atlanta Environmental Protection Division (EPD), the local permitting authority.
The EPA complaint
In the EPA Office of External Civil Rights Compliance complaint, the group says the project is in violation of the Civil Rights Act and the Agency’s nondiscrimination regulations.
“The South River Watershed Alliance and other groups say Atlanta is in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by spending $31 million to fund the $90 million project,” according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Under Title VI, EPA has a responsibility to ensure that funds are not being used ‘to subsidize discrimination based on race, color or national origin.’ The suit claims the city is doing so by building the project in a majority Black and Hispanic neighborhood.
“Atlanta disputes the allegations, noting the training center has withstood multiple legal and administrative challenges relating to environmental impact.
“The construction activities are strictly following the approved Erosion and Sediment Control Plan and Best Management Practices (BMPs) required by Federal, State and local regulations.”
The complaint, dated October 30, 2023, asks the EPA to take the following actions:
- Conduct a thorough investigation of the clear-cutting of the South River Forest’s impact on the neighboring black and Hispanic community.
- Conduct a thorough investigation of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Facility’s dumping of illegal levels of sediment into the South River.
- Require the city of Atlanta to choose a different site for its Atlanta Public Safety Training Facility that doesn’t have a disparate impact on protected classes of people.
- Condition all future grants and monetary awards to the city of Atlanta on its assurance that it will comply with Title VI and implement environmental justice throughout its programs and activities.
The lawsuits
“One lawsuit, South River Watershed Alliance, Inc. v. Atlanta Police Foundation, challenges the issuance of a land development permit to the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) to build Cop City on the grounds that sediment discharges caused by clearing, grading and excavating the land will violate state law,” notes the Legal Defense Fund. “An injunction to halt construction of the facility for the duration of the appeal regarding challenges to the land development permit was denied. Additionally, the South River Watershed Alliance (SRWA) filed a Clean Water Act suit for injunctive relief to stop construction because stormwater is discharged into a polluted stream that exceeds the allowable sediment load established by the state to support aquatic life.”
“[S]ediment runoff is the No. 1 polluter of rivers and streams in the US, and the reason the [federal] Environmental Protection Agency classifies them as ‘too dirty’ for fish and other fauna,” said Sarah H. Ledford, a geosciences professor at Georgia State University, in a November 11, 2023, article in The Guardian.
Sediment runoff measurements are a key indicator of how well construction sites are managing runoff pollution, which is why many are baffled that the USGS stopped monitoring the runoff from the site.
The USGS removed the “streamgauge” that measured sediment runoff near the construction site in February due to safety concerns, as there have been violent incidents surrounding the project, including the burning of cement trucks, the indictment of dozens of people on domestic terrorism and racketeering charges, and the death of an activist who was shot and killed by police.
“As the director of the USGS South Atlantic Water Science center, the safety and wellbeing of my employees rests on my shoulders and I’m not willing to put them in a potentially volatile situation with unusual risks to collect data,” said Vic Engel, director of the center, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I also find it inappropriate to ask my employees to work in an area that requires a strong police presence 24/7 due to past violence and ongoing protests.”
Sediment levels are particularly important to the SRWA in its alleged Clean Water Act (CWA) lawsuit against the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, which is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
The SRWA has asked the federal court for preliminary judgment to halt the project while an underlying citizen’s lawsuit is resolved.
Dekalb County Commissioner Ted Terry and Jacqueline Echols, SRWA board president, “have for months been petitioning the USGS, the city of Atlanta and Dekalb county to restore the gauge, with no apparent resolution,” the November 11 Guardian article says.
Without measures of excessive sediment, providing proof of those levels to the court is challenging.
“What the city of Atlanta is doing from the standpoint of construction is strategic,” said Echols. “Everything they’ve done is in a hurry – to try to suggest to the court and anyone else that they’ve gone too far and spent too much money to turn around.”
Terry said the city’s defense is that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the concrete has already been poured, The Guardian notes.
“Echols, who has been working on cleaning up Intrenchment Creek and the waterway it flows into—the South River—for more than a decade, said that the USGS, ‘by taking the route of not taking sediment samples, is supporting the [‘Cop City’] project. They are complicit as far as I’m concerned.’”
The preliminary judgment motion alleges that discharged sediment from the site into Intrenchment Creek exceeds federally allowed limits, according to a November 18, 2023, article by The Guardian.
“A central legal issue in the case are 15 words in the state’s general permit for development projects, created by the Environmental Protection Division: ‘No discharges authorized by this permit shall cause violations of Georgia’s in-stream water quality standards.’ Those standards – including sediment levels – are set in accordance with the Clean Water Act, and plaintiffs say the project is causing such violations and will continue to do so.”
“[The SRWA’s] counsel, Jon Schwartz, told the court, ‘The only way to enforce the (CWA) here is by stopping construction,’” says the Atlanta Community Press Collective (ACPC).
“Judge Boulee’s questions throughout the hearing suggest he is unconvinced of the plaintiff’s arguments. ‘Is your beef with EPD or is it with the City of Atlanta and the Atlanta Police Foundation,’ he asked Schwartz.”
“Boulee repeatedly returned to whether a permitholder like APF, who he presumed to comply with every other part of its General Permit—a contention [SRWA] disputes—can still face suit if construction results in sediment runoff that exceeds water quality standards, notwithstanding compliance,” the ACPC article adds.
The underlying citizen’s suit in the case seeks to put the continuation of the project up for a public vote and opens a whole other can of worms, with both sides crying “foul.”
On December 14, 2023, “Lawyers for the city of Atlanta … asked a federal appeals court to overturn a lower court ruling that let nonresidents collect signatures as part of the ‘Stop Cop City’ effort to force a referendum on a police and fire training center,” AP News says. “If the city wins, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could kill the petition drive by ruling it illegal under state law, or rule all of 100,000-plus signatures collected are void because none were submitted by the original 60-day deadline of Aug. 21.”
Jeff Filipovits, a lawyer representing four people who reside near the construction site, which sits just outside of Atlanta’s city limits in DeKalb County, said the original ruling should stand, according to the AP News article.
“Filipovits said the city can’t now ask a court to throw out the referendum, saying it should have made those arguments before it issued petitions for the ballot issue. He also told the judges that a state Supreme Court ruling outlawing such referendums is suspect following a recent case, and that there’s separate authority for referendums independent of state law under Atlanta’s city charter. ‘State law is irrelevant to this process,’ Filipovits said.
“Keyanna Jones, one of the plaintiffs, said … collecting petitions was one of the few ways neighbors outside the city could fight the project. ‘We were being disenfranchised from the beginning of the entire process,’ Jones said after the hearing,” AP News continues.
A perfect storm
“‘Environmental racism, police brutality, mass incarceration, and the oppression of minority groups have always been tied together,’ Noah Grigni, a children’s book illustrator who has been participating in actions to support the movement,” says in a Refinery29 article.” “‘‘Cop City’ is a perfect storm.’”
These types of allegations, along with nearby residents not being allowed to weigh in on the project, protests with the local permitting authority, four city councilmembers against the project, and claims of CWA violations, have put a national spotlight on the “Cop City” project.
Analysts are closely following the decisions impacting the project as they continue to unfold with the EPD permit, the CWA federal lawsuit, and the underlying citizen’s suit, as well as the prosecution of those indicted on racketeering and domestic terrorism charges.
At this point, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether the project will be finished at its current location, moved to another location, or scrapped entirely.