“If Georgia’s environmental experts determine it’s safe, I’ll support it,” paraphrases a typical remark from local and state officials when faced with important decisions on issues that range from mining at the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp to the disposal of toxic coal ash. Sounds like a reasonable approach.
We should expect our state environmental agency to have the capacity, resources and institutional knowledge to thoroughly evaluate projects that will affect Georgia’s air, land, and water—and then inform decision-makers. Sadly, that is not the case.
When I became the founding director of Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, thirty years ago, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) staff were, for the most part, well-credentialed and science-focused; they frequently helped me understand the more complex elements of their technical work.Their conclusions and recommendations were not always supported for political reasons (more about that later), but the career staff took their work seriously.
At that time, the state legislature (read: the governor) supported an adequate, if not robust, annual budget. EPD employed more than 900 staff, including experienced engineers, chemists, biologists, hydrologists, modelers, geologists, educators, and more.
Today, EPD is a shadow of its former self in numbers and expertise. In the past twenty years, the agency has been decimated by meager budgets, low employee pay, and high turnover rates. Career employees have retired or moved to better-paying jobs, draining virtually all institutional memory. New hires stay just a few years and move on.
Adjusted for inflation, EPD’s budget has been slashed by 30 percent from 2013 to 2024, and the staff has shrunk by about 150 employees. As Georgia’s population has grown by three million people and revenues have doubled since 2000, sprawling development is increasingly impacting water supplies, air quality, green space, and the coast.
When I hear people say: “Let the environmental experts at EPD determine if it’s safe to mine near the Okefenokee,”—an international treasure whose protection from mining has been strongly supported by multiple federal agencies and more than 100,000 public comments—I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Dirty Dozen
Increasingly ardent calls for less government and less regulation found receptive ears in the Perdue, Deal, and Kemp administrations over the past two decades. As a result, EPD continued its downward spiral in capacity and effectiveness; morale tanked. Recently, Gov. Kemp used Georgia’s staggering revenue surplus to give all state employees a salary boost: however, the improved pay levels are still inadequate to retain highly qualified staff and seasoned leadership at EPD. No comprehensive plan is in the works to bring the environmental agency back to its earlier strength and effectiveness.
As the Georgia Water Coalition notes in its 2024 Dirty Dozen Report: “Our state proudly touts itself as the No. 1 state to do business, but that success in economic development is not without its consequences. When we fail to plan for growth; when we don’t enforce existing laws to protect our water resources; and when we provide anemic funding for the state agency charged with protecting the state’s natural resources, economic development inevitably impacts those resources upon which we all depend.”
Like its predecessors, this year’s Dirty Dozen report describes EPD’s most glaring failures to fully carry out its responsibilities under clean water laws and meet public expectations. Safeguarding the environment, while building the economy, is simply not a priority for the Kemp administration or its legislative leaders.
When Chattahoochee Riverkeeper’s Jason Ulseth discovered that Fulton County was releasing millions of gallons of partially treated sewage into the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area last summer—an obvious and serious public health threat—he immediately called EPD’s emergency response team. No one ever called him back, not that day or any other day. A holiday weekend was approaching and they were apparently “short-staffed.” If the same situation had occurred twenty years ago, EPD experts would have responded immediately and taken action.
Political Capture
There’s a second—even more significant—reason that Georgia is failing to safeguard our environment while boosting the economy: an outcome that is not only possible, but essential. It’s the composition of the governor-appointed Board of Natural Resources (Board): currently eighteen individuals who make final decisions about environmental permits, regulations, policies, and staffing.
You might expect this group (the bosses of the EPD) to have at least some environmental expertise. They do not. There is not a single scientist, environmental engineer, ecologist, wildlife expert, or conservationist on the Board. A coincidence? Hardly.
The board’s expertise lies in poultry processing, real estate, construction materials, law enforcement, nursing homes, road paving, health services, car sales, and insurance. With fourteen white men, two white women, and two non-white men (neither African American), the Board looks nothing like Georgia’s growing and diversifying population. All have been major campaign contributors to Kemp and his two predecessors—of course.
Political capture has been defined as “a type of systematic corruption where narrow interest groups take control of institutions and processes in which public policy is made, directing public policy away from the public interest and instead shaping it to serve their own interests.”
In 1999, then-Gov. Roy Barnes appointed me to the Board for a seven-year term. It was a highly enlightening (and stressful) period of my life. At the time, there were several other conservation-minded and knowledgeable members, also appointed by Barnes and his predecessor Zell Miller. By the late 2000s, there were none. Like EPD, the Board of Natural Resources has been purposefully handicapped in its ability to ensure clean water, clean air, and toxic-free land for all Georgians.
Gov. Kemp has reportedly said protection for Georgia’s environment is key to economic development, but his budget priorities and Board appointments argue otherwise.