Bill Osinski
Georgia Online News Service
You don’t need a visa to go to Richland, Ga.
But anyone heading for this Stewart County town a few miles south of Columbus should heed some third-world travel advice: DON’T DRINK THE WATER!
Basically, the city’s water lines have become choked with asbestos contamination. It’s gotten so bad that the city must charge a flat rate to all its customers, because many individual water meters around town have become so thickly clogged that they cannot be read anymore.
The situation is getting resolved; about 80 percent of the city’s water lines will be replaced sometime this year. Still, the remaining pipes are also bad and Richland is already so in debt from the first round of replacements that it can’t afford what remains to be done.
The story of Richland’s failed pipes is also one of failed politics, one that may require a state-level solution. It’s also a glaring illustration of how much infrastructure renewal — the new watchword of the Obama administration — is needed in places like Richland all over the country.
At Red’s Pizza, though, the issue is more local and fundamental.
“My customers are scared,” said Brenda Landreth, who runs the Richland restaurant with her husband, Red. “They don’t want asbestos in their sweet tea.”
To allay such concerns, the Landreths use only bottled water at their restaurant. It raises their costs, and it hasn’t yet made up for the drop-off in business since the problem became public in 2006, Brenda Landreth said.
Besides, it makes their hard job even harder. “When I run out of water, I have to run out to the convenience store to buy more,” she said.
Mayor Adolph McLendon is trying to keep a lid on local anxiety, while he works to get the new water lines in place. “The people here have had a longstanding concern, and justifiably so,” McLendon said.
The problem can be traced to the federally subsidized urban renewal programs of the 1960s, when Richland got a new set of municipal water lines. Problem was, the concrete of the pipes was laced with asbestos, believed then to be a beneficial compound, rather than the dangerous carcinogen it is now known to be.
Over the years, the naturally alkaline waters of the area eroded the interior linings of the water pipes, and the asbestos leached into the water, he said.
The situation came to light in 2006, when the Georgia Environmental Protection Division did random sampling of the water in Richland after some water line repairs.
McLendon said those readings ran as high as 40,000 parts per million of asbestos, several orders of magnitude above allowable levels. Recent readings have mostly ranged between 20 and 100 parts per million, which is still considered elevated, he said.
For the past two legislative sessions, Richland has attempted to get a bill through the Legislature which would give the town special authority to impose a municipal sales tax earmarked for repairs to the water system. The city of Atlanta was able to get a similar measure passed for its infrastructure repairs, but Richland has so far failed in its bid.
McLendon said the sales tax route is preferable to the hodge-podge of grants and loans the city has used to finance the repairs so far. “We don’t want to borrow a lot of extra money we can’t afford to pay back,” he said. He noted that 70 percent of Richland’s population of about 1,700 is in the low-income bracket.
Estimates of the cost for the still-needed repairs range from $500,000 to $700,000, he said, adding that the clock is ticking. “The bad pipe that’s still in the ground will only get worse,” he said.
The Richland situation is the “most egregious” example statewide of city governments having to take a back seat to their county government, said Amy Henderson, public information manager for the Georgia Municipal Association.
Currently, she said, Special Option Local Sales Tax referenda are, by law, presented to the electorate on a county-wide basis. Although the county governments are required to consult with their cities on how the tax revenues are to be spent, typically, the renovations to the county courthouse or the new county jail get the priority. Often, though, the infrastructure repair problems are mostly the cities’ problems, she said.
“The county project usually gets the first bite of the apple,” she said. For example, Stewart County, which includes Richland, used a recent SPLOST referendum to finance renovation of the courthouse in the county seat, Lumpkin.
A measure offered in the current legislative session, HB66, would give cities the right to propose their own referenda on special tax issues, Henderson said.
In the mean time, Richland has to deal with getting the rest of the asbestos out of its water. Besides the debt burden imposed by the problem, Richland’s efforts to develop and grow are being seriously hampered, according to Rossi Ross, chairman of the Richland Downtown Development Authority.
The city would love to market itself as a place to settle for retirees from nearby Fort Benning, he said, but other civic improvements need to be made first. “Before those people would come here, they want a fixed-up downtown, they want doctors and restaurants, they want clean water,” Ross said.
And until the tap water gets cleaned up, the people of Richland, up to and including the mayor, mostly buy their drinking water from the store.
Bill Osinski has worked as a reporter for 36 years and during his tenure at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he reported from 130 of Georgia’s 159 counties for his Main Street Georgia column and for in-depth stories. Osinski was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting.
