Georgia EV plant backed by the climate law sparks water war

SAVANNAH, Georgia — When Hyundai moved to build a giant electric vehicle factory outside this coastal city, it didn’t foresee that water would be an enemy.

The $7.6 billion facility is supported by every level of government, including Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, county officials and the Biden administration, through EV tax credits from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. But the 4 million gallons of water per day the plant expects to use is sparking protests from farmers and other residents who say it could drain the local aquifer and worsen the region’s flooding.

“Not only do we not want to buy the product that's being made,” Amanda Wilson, a local anti-development activist, said about electric vehicles, “but it's forcing us out of the way that we live.”

The Savannah fight shows how clean energy projects supported by the climate law are reshaping communities and ironically facing backlash for potential harm to the environment. Projects are scrambling local politics and creating atypical allies, as Republicans support plans touted by President Joe Biden and environmentalists oppose industrial initiatives meant to combat climate change.

In Hyundai’s case, Republicans are clashing with one another about the plant in a battleground state where votes on the margin could influence which way Georgia sides in November’s presidential race. The plant also may be reinforcing sentiment against EVs, which are already unpopular with many state residents.

Hyundai’s troubles have it joining other EV-related factories juiced by IRA funding in battleground states that have run into local opposition. In Michigan, battery maker Gotion has faced local pushback — and has become a political flashpoint — because its corporate parent is Chinese. Also in Michigan, neighbors of Ford’s planned battery plant in Marshall sued unsuccessfully to block the land being zoned for heavy industry in an area of mostly farmland.

In Savannah, Hyundai says it is looking out for residents’ concerns, and the plant’s supporters say it will provide a huge economic jolt. The 16-million-square-foot factory, built on unincorporated land, rolled its first production vehicle off the line in October. The company said in a statement that its first vehicle model, the electric Hyundai Ioniq 5, will start appearing at dealerships by the end of the year. So far, the plant has hired over 1,000 people; Hyundai has promised to create up to 8,500 jobs.

“The trickle effect … is massive, and these projects bring in good wages,” said Hugh "Trip" Tollison, CEO of the Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA), an economic development agency that fostered the project.

But the plant is facing a potential roadblock because of the Army Corps of Engineers, which said earlier this year it would reconsider a key water permit after meeting with opponents of the project.

The battle started after local, state and federal officials approved plans for water wells 4 miles away from the factory.

The plant is in Bryan County, a mostly rural area with limits on water pumping. So officials located Hyundai’s wells to the north, in Bulloch County, where there are fewer water limits. There, the local water table may drop 19 feet and cause farmers’ pumps to run dry, according to state data. Along Bulloch County’s roads are signs saying “Stop Hyundai Wells.’’ A nonprofit guardian of the region’s river, Ogeechee Riverkeeper, has threatened legal action.

People in the conservative Savannah countryside are starting to think of Hyundai’s "Metaplant," as the company calls it, as part of a larger scheme by regional and state officials to sneak big industry into town before the neighbors can react and organize.

“The good ol’ boy system is thick, it's as thick as the humidity in the summertime,” said Jenifer Hilburn, an activist at 100 Miles, a nonprofit that works to protect the environment of the Georgia coast.

Much of the blowback is bypassing Hyundai and is pointed at politicians who brought the automaker to town.

One target is Kemp, whose administration has been key to landing EV projects in the state. Some locals snort at his 2022 campaign billboards, still standing on Interstate 16 heading into Savannah, showing the governor in work jeans and the slogan, “Fighting for rural Georgia.”

“He’s the one who is selling this part of the state out to the Hyundai plant,” said Nick Newkirk, the owner of a local pizza shop who recently won a Republican primary for a seat on the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners, in part on a platform opposing the wells.

Kemp’s press secretary, Garrison Douglas, pushed back against criticism.

“Unlike the federal government, here in Georgia, we don’t take a top-down approach to economic development. We work with our local and private sector partners to identify how we can best support their efforts," Douglas said in a statement. "As a rural Georgian, [the governor] remains committed to seeing this generational project completed and positively transforming the lives of those in the community and across our state."

Hyundai has attempted to build bridges with the community by recruiting the local art college to paint the company’s water tower with wind turbines and solar panels. It gave more than $300,000 this year to local charities and frequently touts its pledge to offer jobs at above-average wages.

Hyundai’s EV plant isn’t the first in the state to swim into a water controversy.

Georgia's other marquee EV maker is Rivian, which won state and local incentives to build a giant auto plant east of Atlanta. The project is now on pause because the market has cooled for Rivian’s products. But prior to that, the company faced a lawsuit from a local group of activists who argued the construction and paving could despoil local water supplies.

“I don’t care if the state wants to build EVs, but please don’t do it on top of our drinking water,” said JoEllen Artz, a member of the group that filed the lawsuits, called No on Rivian.

Awkwardness at the aquifer

Hyundai’s water tangle is tied to the Floridan aquifer, a natural subterranean reservoir that underlies all of Florida and coastal Georgia, as well as parts of Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina.

Like aquifers everywhere, the Floridan is under threat of being overtapped as cities, farms and industry grow. In coastal areas like Savannah, the threat is that over-sucking could draw in salt water from the Atlantic Ocean and taint the aquifer.

Decades ago, Savannah-area counties divided the region into three zones to protect groundwater. The first, the corner of northeast Georgia that includes downtown Savannah, is a red zone where groundwater withdrawals had to be reduced. The yellow zone, including Bryan County and the adjoining Liberty County to the south, is where no new water could be extracted. The rest is the green zone, where new wells could be drilled. Much of the remainder of Georgia also sits in a green zone.

Hyundai’s Metaplant lies in the yellow zone — an awkward location for a thirsty new industrial tenant.

At full production by 2031, Hyundai estimates it will use 4 million gallons of water a day, which is the equivalent of more than six Olympic-size swimming pools. Water will be used for everything from running the factory’s boilers to washing the company’s cars. The plant’s usage is equivalent to roughly 6 percent of what Savannah pumped daily last year, according to city data .

The Southeast in recent decades has become the principal destination for foreign automakers to build their U.S. factories, drawn by inexpensive land and weak labor unions.

Since 2014, economic development agencies in the Savannah area had been eyeing this stretch of land in Bryan County and laying the groundwork for it to host an automaker. Formerly a private hunting preserve, the site was inexpensive and near both Savannah and the major artery of Interstate 16.

In 2021, the vision moved closer as several landowners sold their parcels to the Savannah Harbor-Interstate 16 Corridor Joint Development Authority, an agency of four local county development authorities encompassing Savannah and its surrounding countryside.

The following year, the authority landed Hyundai as the tenant. Kemp, who has pledged to make Georgia into an “electric mobility capital,” signed an agreement with Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung. The project is the largest economic development project in state history.

Seventeen suppliers are setting up factories in the area, making everything from advanced electronics to headrests, and promising an additional $2.7 billion in investment. Those suppliers have promised almost 7,000 additional jobs in addition to the 8,500 Hyundai jobs.

“A Super Bowl project” is how Tollison of SEDA — which is a companion agency to the joint development authority — describes the Hyundai factory. He also contends that the faraway wells in Bulloch County are the best environmental solution for it.

“I remind folks all the time, the reason we’re spending so much money and going so far with this is to protect the aquifer,” he said.

A long straw

As Hyundai was being onboarded, SEDA, the joint development authority and the state economic development department devised a technical solution to meet the plant’s water needs.

By building what is essentially a 4-mile-long straw into the green zone in Bulloch County, they could harness the water supply without violating state environmental rules.

In May 2022, officials unveiled the details: Four wells would be dug, two controlled by Bulloch County and two by Bryan County, with a combined maximum draw of more than 6 million gallons a day. Two future wells could add up to 3.4 million gallons a day.

Locals quickly began to protest, armed with data from the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. Along with estimating that the wells could cause the water table to drop by up to 19 feet at farms nearby, it found other farms could see a drop of 10 feet, and lesser declines could occur as far away as Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.

In Bulloch County, anger over the well issue erupted into elections for the county Board of Commissioners, where three Republican incumbents were ousted in the June primary .

Occupants of the commission seats will be determined in November’s election, but the incumbents were outvoted by newcomers who accused board members of maneuvering to support Hyundai at the expense of local farmers.

One of those newcomers was Newkirk, who said that his views on the issue are not because he's "anti-growth or anti-industry.”

“But the thing is you’ve got to protect the residents who live here,” he said.

Meanwhile, a local activist group, the Bulloch Action Coalition, is gathering signatures for a petition to repeal the commission’s approval of the wells. The group has obtained close to half the necessary signatures and hopes to put it on a special ballot early next year, Newkirk said.

Call in the Army Corps

Perhaps the Hyundai plant’s biggest barrier is Ogeechee Riverkeeper, an environmental group with a staff of six that works to protect the Ogeechee River, one of the Georgia coast’s principal waterways.

The region’s "not really prepared for all the growth, with either water supply or wastewater,” said Damon Mullis, the group’s executive director.

In June, the group threatened to sue the Army Corps and the Treasury Department, which was targeted because the wells and a new wastewater-treatment plant for Hyundai’s factory rely on several threads of federal funds, including the American Rescue Plan, a law that Congress approved in 2021.

Ogeechee Riverkeeper’s contention is that the Army Corps, which regulates the dredging of wetlands, violated the Clean Water Act by rubber-stamping the project without taking into account the impact on water supplies or the actual dimensions of the project, which expanded as time went on.

The 6.6 million gallons a day are meant to serve not just the Hyundai plant but also residential needs in Bryan County. The Army Corps issued its permit in 2022, based on an evaluation of the site in 2019. That review determined the wells would have a “negligible effect” on local water supplies. Ogeechee Riverkeeper objected because the Hyundai plant has expanded in footprint by almost 600 acres since first proposed.

“We found that the steps taken did not fully assess the available information, or did not consider it at all,” Ogeechee Riverkeeper said in a statement at the time.

The Army Corps changed its tune after a meeting with Ogeechee Riverkeeper in late August. The agency said in a letter that “reevaluation of its permit decision regarding its effects determination for water supplies is warranted.”

“Our evaluation was based on the information we had at that time, which did not indicate that there was a concern regarding water supply. Based on recently obtained new information, we are taking another look,” said Emily Klinkenborg, a spokesperson for the Savannah district of the Army Corps.

The Corps asked the joint development authority and the state economic development department to submit information on how the wells would affect the environment. In a joint statement to POLITICO’s E&E News, the head of the economic development department, JDA and SEDA said they would “deliver this information as soon as possible,” adding they “remain committed to doing this the right way."

The Army Corps has several options short of shutting off Hyundai’s water supply.

According to Ben Kirsch, Ogeechee Riverkeeper’s legal director, the Army Corps could require Hyundai and state development agencies to add more money to a $1 million fund they said they will create to compensate farmers for damage to their wells. Another option is shortening the period in which the water can be pumped, which is currently set at 25 years.

But the group is seeking a more sweeping solution. It wants Hyundai and other new industries “to stop using the Floridan Aquifer and to switch to an alternative source of water supply,” Kirsch said in an email. “The aquifer's waters should be prioritized for human consumption and agriculture.”

So far, it is unclear what impact the permit uncertainty is having on Hyundai or its suppliers.

“Hyundai has worked tirelessly with the relevant authorities to ensure we are good neighbors to those in the region and that our operations do not negatively impact the community’s water resources,” Hyundai said in a statement.

Mullis, Ogeechee Riverkeeper’s director, said he supports the spread of electric vehicles to lower emissions contributing to climate change, which is expected to increase sea levels that could worsen Georgia’s coastal flooding. According to EPA, transportation accounts for 28 percent of America’s carbon emissions.

‘The fact that they’re making EVs does not excuse them from the problems they’re causing,” Mullis said of Hyundai.

Warehouses of anger

Sentiment toward the Hyundai project — and by extension, toward electric vehicles — can’t be disentangled from the construction of warehouses on Georgia’s coast that are part of the Southeast’s economic boom.

In 2019, the forested landscape surrounding Savannah’s urban core and historic district began a startling change, as bulldozers appeared along the two-lane roads where people live on acre lots in houses or trailers. Cranes would arrive to tilt up a warehouse, a faceless block next to residents’ chicken coops and play swings. Diesel trucks now roar along the roads.

“The public has been just straight up blindsided by this warehousing boom,” said Kerrie Bieber, the co-founder of West Chatham Community Watch, a local group resisting the development.

The warehouses resulted from a giant expansion at the Port of Savannah that today makes it the country’s fourth-largest container port. The expansion prompted speculators to build warehouses to accommodate shipments destined not just for Hyundai but for all goods in the rapidly growing Southeast.

Last fall, a coalition of environmental groups estimated that warehouses built and under construction on the Georgia coast equaled about 200 million square feet, equal to the area of 6,072 football fields. From the air, the green carpet of pines that stretches to the horizon is now studded with white-roofed rectangles.

Those warehouses, in turn, are intimately tied to the area's rivers and wetlands. The Georgia coast is a shelf lying barely above sea level, and its waterways wind through the forests of loblolly pine and drain into an unpopulated tideland that buffers Savannah from the Atlantic. “It’s hard to find any substantial piece of land that doesn’t have wetlands on it,” said Mullis.

Ogeechee Riverkeeper says it is concerned that the large-scale paving over of the spongy land — to build the warehouses, the auto factory and its suppliers — will amplify dangerous flooding during storms, which are growing stronger in an era of changing climate. It is also worried about what might be in Hyundai’s wastewater, which will get processed and returned to the waterways.

“It’s a double whammy of both things happening at once,” said Kris Howard, Ogeechee’s former science and policy manager, of the Hyundai plant and the warehouses.

The Kamala Harris connection

It’s unclear how the plant fight might affect Savannahians’ perceptions of EVs. However, residents are at least somewhat aware that EVs are tied to the port and the warehouses as possible agents of local environmental degradation.

“I've not studied it or really given it much thought,” Bieber said of the connection of Hyundai’s EV plant to her concerns about the local environment. But she added, “When I hear [about the factory], it just kind of stirs up anger.”

Whether the regional brawl might weigh into voters’ decisions in the presidential race is an open question.

The climate law included a consumer tax credit of $7,500 for electric vehicles that meet rigorous domestic production requirements. Meeting those rules — in the form of its new U.S. plant — is one reason Hyundai is building its factory so quickly.

“This is a factor without a doubt,” said José Muñoz, the president and CEO of Hyundai North America, in an interview earlier this year.

While the Biden administration has touted the law heavily, it’s been selective where it does so.

In August, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris held a campaign rally in Savannah and mostly repeated greatest hits from her speech at the Democratic National Convention a week earlier. She made almost no mention of local topics or issues, including the Hyundai plant.

It is unknown if the controversy over the plant caused Harris to shy away from it, and the Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment. But Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, found it surprising that Harris would fail to mention a project backed by the administration’s climate law dollars and that is the biggest development project in Savannah’s history.

“I would think she'd be able to make some connections — that we provided some funding, that says, ‘This connects with our efforts to fight climate change,’” Bullock added. “It seems like a missed opportunity to make that connection.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the amount of water that the city of Savannah pumps in a day.