Following a recommendation from the Groundwater Sustainability Program advisory committee created by Bryan and Bulloch counties, the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners last week approved a contract to have Georgia Southern University monitor groundwater levels around the four large, county-owned Hyundai supply wells, using six monitor wells.
If also approved by the Bryan County commissioners, the monitoring program could remain in effect for five years.
The advisory committee, which consists of six members – three appointed from each county – had met Dec. 11 and heard reports from the engineering firms and county mitigation managers. James Pope, who besides being Bulloch’s planning and development director serves as the county’s well mitigation program manager, then reported to the elected Bulloch County commissioners during their Dec. 16 regular meeting.
Meant to supply water primarily to Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, two of the four high-capacity deep wells are owned by Bulloch County and two by Bryan County, but all four are geographically within Bulloch, not far from the Bryan County line and Interstate 16. The four wells, together, are permitted by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, or EPD, to withdraw up to 6.625 million gallons per day, on average, each year.
As a condition of the well permits, the EPD required the counties to establish a mitigation program to fix or replace any private wells affected by dropping water levels in the Floridan aquifer within a five-mile radius of a rough center point of the four big wells.
The four wells were drilled earlier this year, and one of Bryan County’s wells is “starting up” and the other expected to be online by mid-January, Pope said. Bulloch’s two wells, he also reported with a projected slide, should be online by the end of March. None of the wells is “in production” or supplying water to Hyundai or other customers yet, Pope said.
However, the well-drilling firms and the counties’ consulting engineers performed a 24-hour test run of the four wells – not all at the same time but individually – and summarized the results. Each of the wells was operated at 1.5 times its maximum permitted withdrawal rate of 1,800 gallons per minute, he said.
“Really, in summary, the results are much better than what the EPD model showed, and I think in the past week or so at the Water Council meeting that was held, EPD has indicated that they’re going to go back and remodel the impact of the four wells,” Pope told the Bulloch commissioners.
The EPD’s own scientists originally predicted a drop of about 19 feet near an approximate center point of the four wells’ locations.
Pope’s chart indicated that the well identified as Bryan County Number 1 was operated at 2,700 gpm and drew down the water level by 23 feet in the casing of the well itself and that Bryan No. 2, when operated at 2,800 gpm, produced a 10.8-feet direct drawdown.
When operated at 2,700 gpm for 24 hours, Bulloch No. 1 drew the level down by 12 feet, and Bulloch No. 2, by 10.3 feet.
Less than 19 feet
However, a smaller well, with a 4-inch diameter bore, located about 150 feet from Bulloch 2, was also used to monitor the drawdown and showed a drop of just 4.4 feet while the larger well was pumping at 150% of permit maximum. This monitoring well was a “washout” well that had been drilled to provide water for use in drilling the larger well. He later commented that a well like that shows more of what the mitigation program is concerned with, the effect on other wells.
“Initially (EPD) said a 19-foot drawdown,” he told the commissioners. “But based on our results we really don’t feel like it would be as significant of a predicted drawdown. So EPD’s kind of said that their model was a little conservative.”
Meanwhile, the advisory committee members and staff “feel that it would be beneficial to the community and really for both boards of commissioners if we establish a groundwater monitoring program so that we can verify what we think we know,” Pope said.
Quoting the proposal, he said it would “establish a defensible baseline for groundwater levels.”
Monitoring plan
The five-year monitoring program recommended by the advisory panel will have scientists from Georgia Southern University use automated equipment to monitor six other, existing wells within a five-mile radius of the “pumping center” of the four high-capacity wells.
The $235,008 total cost of the program, over five years, includes $84,616 for the startup year and then annual costs of $35,709 the second year, rising gradually to $39,020 the third year.
As Pope reported, the university’s offer was the lower-priced of two proposals obtained by the committee and managers for a five-year, six-well monitoring program. The other proposal was from Triple Point Engineering, which would have charged $362,100.
According to Georgia Southern’s proposal, from one to three wells will be located east-southeast of the center. Remaining wells will be located to the north, south, east and west, with at least one well each at less than one mile away, in the one- to three-mile range and one more than three miles from the pumping.
Each of the six wells will be equipped with a vented pressure transducer and data logger to record water levels at 15-minute intervals.
The contract, as approved so far, is between Bulloch County and Georgia Southern University, without naming any division or unit of the university. However, the contract names Dr. Asli Aslan, who is founding director of the Institute for Water and Health at Georgia Southern, as “principal investigator” for the five-year monitoring project and Victor Orbi, a hydrologist at the center, as the “project hydrologist.” An unnamed part-time field technician is also to be assigned to the project.
The assigned personnel would produce quarterly and annual reports, and Pope said the
The committee’s intent was that the funding of the study will come directly from the mitigation fund. This has been established with commitments totaling $1 million, including $250,000 each from the Development Authority of Bulloch County, Development Authority of Bryan County, Savannah Harbor-Interstate 16 Corridor Joint Development Authority and Hyundai Motor Group. So far, $750,000 has been deposited by the three development authorities and is earning interest, but Hyundai’s share had yet to arrived as of Dec. 15.
“Hyundai is aware and has been invoiced for the money, so no problem here with the fund,” Pope said. “It is established, and if there were problems tomorrow, we would have the ability to draw down the funds and fix any issues.”
Additionally, of the money Hyundai or other customers pay for water from the big wells, 10 cents per 1,000 gallons is also contracted to go to the mitigation fund. With those payments and interest, the fund would probably contain about $1.5 million after five years if nothing were paid out, he said.
Dr. Frank Davis, a retired physician who resides in Bulloch County and serves as secretary of the advisory committee, also spoke to the commissioners, noting that two of them are farmers.
“You make your living from the ground and using water, and we felt like, even though the drawdowns are less than what were anticipated, we owe it to the county and all the folks that make their living that we need to document and prove what the drawdown really is, so there’s no question,” Davis said.
Funding source
Commissioner Nick Newkirk said he would prefer for the money to come from the counties’ future income from water customers instead of the mitigation fund.
“Is there any way we can swap the payment coming out of the mitigation fund to using the actual money that we’re getting from the actual wells after, like, the first year when we start getting money coming in?” he asked, “because I’d hate to burn through $250,000 of mitigation fund. … This fund is here to help the people in case the wells run dry.”
However, he also noted that the state has also stepped up the timeline for the Hyundai plant to move from using the wells to using surface water.
County Manager Chris Eldridge noted that the amount to be paid for the monitoring program is spread out over five years, and County Attorney Jeff Akins observed that the contract with Georgia Southern didn’t actually state the source of the funding.
Commissioner Anthony Simmons made the motion to approve the contract, Commissioner Timmy Rushing seconded, and Newkirk joined in the 6-0 unanimous approval.
But the Bryan County Board of Commissioners’ approval will also be needed, according to Pope. If that board approves in January, the monitoring program could begin in a couple of months, he said.