CITY OF GRIFFIN TAKEN TO COURT

 

Wednesday the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a Clean Water Act Citizen Suit on behalf of the Flint Riverkeeper against the City of Griffin for discharging polluted wastewater and sewage from its sanitary sewer system into a tributary of the Flint River, putting downstream communities and waterways at risk.    The City of Griffin owns, controls, manages, and operates a sanitary sewer system to route wastewater through the city and to its wastewater treatment facilities. Over the past several years, the city’s failing and deteriorating sanitary sewer system has caused untreated sewage and stormwater containing sewage to discharge from various manholes around the city into the Potato Creek Basin, which flows directly into the Flint River and also supplies drinking water to communities downstream.    SELC filed the suit along with private attorneys at Evans Bowers representing nearby homeowners. Since 2019, the homeowners have documented repeated overflows from the city’s sewer system manholes that discharge directly onto their property and into Ison Branch, a tributary of Potato Creek. Water quality sampling data from many of these incidents has shown elevated E. coli counts that are harmful to human health and wildlife.   “The City of Griffin cannot continue to pollute Potato Creek and other tributaries at the expense of communities who rely on the Flint River,” said Gordon Rogers, Flint Riverkeeper. “Downstream communities shouldn’t have to worry about raw sewage contaminating their drinking water and the areas where they fish, swim, and paddle. We know that the City has already performed the engineering and budgeting for the needed work; we are filing this suit in part to ensure that they fund what they already know they need to do and are hopeful that this legal action can lead to an early resolution.”   “The City of Griffin’s ongoing, illegal discharges of raw sewage and other pollution threatens the health and safety of everyone who depends on the Flint River for clean water,” said Joe DeGaetano, Senior Attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “The City must take responsibility for bringing its failing sewer system into compliance with federal law. Seven years of allowing raw sewage to flow into the river is enough.”