Officials race to meet Hyundai’s water needs

Editor’s note: Aug. 11, 2024 at 7:10 p.m.: This story was updated to include information about Floridan aquifer depth.

Local counties have been hustling to make sure EV maker Hyundai gets the water Georgia promised it to produce cars in Coastal Georgia. In two hastily called meetings in late June, Bulloch County agreed to work with neighbor Bryan County to provide water and sewer services and to establish a well mitigation fund program.

The pace of local decision-making about the essential natural resource has many local residents worried. Uncertainty about regional water resource planning, meanwhile, has sparked the threat of a lawsuit.

Trip Tollison, president and CEO of the Savannah Economic Development Authority, spoke to The Current to explain the thought process behind the plan, which still needs final state approval for four new wells in Bulloch County to supply Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America about 6.6 million gallons of water a day.

“Basically, we had to get it done so that we can meet Hyundai’s schedule,” said Tollison.

However, the Metaplant, which plans to start producing cars off the assembly line in late 2024, will only be using a small percentage of those permitted amounts for the foreseeable future.

Tollison said that the Metaplant campus has enough water from a well on site to cover its needs in its initial launch phase, about 335,000 gallons a day. But by the second quarter of 2025, Georgia has promised to deliver almost 6.5 times as much: 2.15 million gallons a day, according to Angela Hendrix, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Public Relations for the Savannah Economic Development Authority.

That will require at least two of the wells in Bulloch County to be up and running by April. None have been issued final permits yet. (Read the draft permit for Bulloch here and Bryan here. ) The state Environmental Protection Division has scheduled a  public hearing about the draft permits for August 13 at Southeast Bulloch High School.

The wells are planned for an area in Bulloch County right over the line with Bryan County. They’ll be drilled there because the state has limited pumping in Bryan, which is in the state’s “yellow zone” of decreased groundwater use. Not so in Bulloch, which sits in the “green zone.”

The promise to keep the water flowing on Hyundai’s schedule has increased the sense of urgency about the permits.

“We were running out of time,” Tollison said.

Protecting farmers

Residents and farmers in Bulloch who depend on groundwater for drinking and irrigation are worried the new wells will deplete their existing wells. In response, regulators proposed an unusual mitigation measure — a fund to protect private well owners if their water supply is affected.

• FAQ: How much do you know about your water?

Hyundai won’t be paying for the planned $1 million mitigation fund; Georgia taxpayers will through area development authorities. Bulloch County Development Authority; Bryan County Development Authority; and the Savannah Harbor-Interstate 16 Corridor Joint Development Authority, known as the Joint Development Authority are expected to pitch in $250,000 each.

“The hope is to have others contribute to get to that $1 million,” Hendrix said.

The Development Authority of Bulloch County approved its funding last month, payable from its reserves, CEO Benjy Thompson said. The Development Authority of Bryan County has it on their agenda for Aug. 13 to approve the $250,000 for the mitigation fund.The Joint Development Authority held an emergency board meeting via Zoom Thursday to approve its contribution to the fund.

The JDA reached a tentative agreement, but only after a tense meeting during which Chairman Carter Infinger, chairman of the Bryan County Commission, lacked ready answers to board members’ questions about how the money would be managed, disbursed and ultimately returned to the JDA if not needed.

Board member Chester Ellis, chairman of the Chatham County Commission, balked at the lack of information and the rushed vote.

“Why are we voting on something that you cannot explain to us, and we don’t know. …. (Y)ou just want us to pop on here and say yes and keep going,” Ellis told Infinger during the meeting.

Board member Roy Thompson, chairman of the Bulloch County Commission, warned that “hell is going to break loose” if the authority didn’t approve the well mitigation fund money before a public meeting in Bulloch scheduled for Tuesday to collect public comment on the draft well permits.

“I know these citizens the EPD is going to be facing, they’re going to be irate, and if we don’t have something we’re gonna have a problem,” Thompson said.

RESTRICTION ZONES

Georgia developed a plan in 2006 to manage groundwater along the coast, in part to avoid a water war with South Carolina.

Regulators imposed ongoing restrictions and reductions on permitted water users in targeted areas around Savannah after years of massive pumping from the Floridan aquifer created a “cone of depression” where water pressure was lowered. The three designated zones are:

• Red Zone includes all of Chatham County and the southern half of Effingham County. (A small portion of Brunswick is also in a red zone because of a different saltwater intrusion issue). This zone is most vulnerable to saltwater intrusion related to the cone of depression. Permitted users reduced their permitted withdrawals by 30% from 2004 to 2010. Withdrawals decreased another 15% in 2020.  An almost 10% reduction in groundwater withdrawals in the red zone is scheduled for 2025.

• Yellow Zone includes Bryan and Liberty counties because they are also vulnerable but less so.  Here water withdrawals have been allowed to increase slowly by about 20% over the last two decades. However, a decrease of about 3% is scheduled for next year.

• The Green Zone includes areas not currently at risk of saltwater intrusion so no new no restrictions on Floridan aquifer pumping have been imposed.

The plan appears to be working. The cone of depression measured a pressure equal to 90 feet below sea level in 1998. Now it’s 40 feet higher, EPD Geologist Christine Voudy said at a public meeting about the Hyundai wells in February.

Ultimately the JDA board approved the $250,000 but made the release of the funds dependent upon the approval of the policies that are going to be established and voted on at an Aug. 29 meeting. Chester Ellis was the only no vote. He remained frustrated after the meeting.

“Why didn’t we know last month we had to get this done?” he said. “It’s because not enough information is being given to those of us who have to report to our citizens.”

Prior to Thursday’s meeting the JDA had not met in three months, Ellis said. Board member Steve Green on Thursday called for regularly scheduled meetings.

“We call a meeting when there’s a quasi-emergency, and I know there’s a lot going on, but don’t you think that the board members need to be kept apprised of that on a regular basis?” he asked.

Not all the information shared at Thursday’s meeting was accurate. When members asked how long permits are issued for, Infinger replied, “It’s for 25 years.” No one corrected him. But the draft permit states “(T)his Permit will expire ten (10) years from
the issuance date on this permit.”

Model predicts impact on existing wells

The EPD developed a model to predict which existing private wells would most likely be impacted by the new wells for Hyundai. Regulators presented their findings as an interactive map at a public meeting in February in Bulloch County and provided a copy on the EPD web site.

Using the map to its fullest required downloading Google Earth, a process that proved unwieldy for many users. The Current has created a simplified version of the map, available below.

Hyundai’s water needs affect Bulloch farmers

The graphic shows how pumping up to about 6.6 million gallons a day from four proposed wells in Bulloch County will reduce the water pressure in surrounding wells. The contour lines show by how many feet the water level of Floridan aquifer wells nearby are likely to drop.

EPD hydrologist Bill Frechette reiterated in an email to The Current that the new wells in Bulloch County aren’t expected to have a severe impact on existing wells. EPD officials say no wells will go dry.

“Our consideration is that while there may be a decline in water levels, no wells will actually go dry unless the pump itself was installed too close to the surface without sufficient buffer/insurance being incorporated,” Frechette wrote. “Say a well with an existing pump set at 200 feet below land surface, right at the existing water level, that well will obviously have problems when water drops to 219 feet deep.  But this can be cured by simply resetting the pump level by lowering the pump in the well below the new water level and with sufficient buffer built in. Move the pump to 275 feet and the water problem disappears.  There is no need to drill any well deeper.”

Tollison said only a handful of agricultural wells are within the five-mile radius the mitigation fund targets.

“We’ve got three agricultural wells that are in the area that we’re going above and beyond to make sure they’re going to be OK,” Tollison said. “So I was pretty surprised at that number. I thought it was gonna be more ag wells. I feel like we’re doing the right thing in setting up the mitigation fund. And it doesn’t apply just to agriculture customers, but homeowners as well. Those (domestic) wells are definitely not nearly as expensive and aren’t as technical as an ag well. Ag wells suck a lot of water.”

The wells supplying water to Hyundai will draw water from the Floridan aquifer, which is hundreds of feet deep in Bulloch County and covered by a clay cap. Many of the domestic wells in Bulloch draw water from much shallower aquifers that don’t share water with the Floridan. Regulators expect those domestic wells to be unaffected by the new wells.

Christine Voudy, a geologist with the EPD, said the depth of a residential well indicates the aquifer from which it draws.

“Anywhere between 150 and 400 feet, depending on where you are in Bulloch County is gonna let you know if you’re sitting in the Floridan aquifer,” she said at a February public meeting in Bulloch, as she showed a map of Floridan aquifer depths. “If you are shallower than that you are not in the Floridan.”

Wells a stop-gap

The Floridan aquifer wells are a stop gap method to get water to the behemoth plant until a long-term solution can be executed. That 25-year plan is likely to involve drawing millions more gallons of water a day from the Savannah River. But doing so isn’t as easy as sticking a pipe in the river.

River water requires more processing than does well water, which is better protected from contaminants of all sorts. Savannah water officials have long bragged that Savannah’s well water — from the Floridan aquifer — is potable right from the source and needs disinfectant only to keep it clean on its journey through pipes. Making river water potable, on the other hand, will require a massive upgrade to the area’s surface water treatment infrastructure.

Another possibility is drilling wells in the Cretaceous aquifer, which sits below the Floridan. But its water is not only deeper, but also saltier, making it more expensive to use. Tybee Island, which sits in the red zone, tried to drill a Cretaceous well, but the drilling went awry in 2016 and it abandoned the project.

Officials considered going right to the river for Hyundai’s water needs but ultimately rejected it, Tollison said. It was cheaper and quicker to use well water.

Surface water would have come from Savannah’s Industrial & Domestic water treatment plant on Highway 21 in Port Wentworth, which would require an upgrade and new transmission lines to north Bryan County. He estimated the cost at $470 million to $480 million. The four wells and transmission lines are expected to cost about $115 million to $118 million, a savings of about $362 million.

“We can’t ignore that,” Tollison said.

The savings equate to 4.8% of Hyundai’s $7.59 billion promised investment in the plant.

And the wells are about seven years quicker.

“In order to get the water out of Bulloch County into the Hyundai plant in north Bryan is about a three-year deal from permitting, design, all the things you’ve got to do, easements. In order to get the water to the site it’s about a three-year deal for Bryan,” Tollison said. “It’s about a 10-year deal to get it out of Savannah.”

Savannah Harbor-Interstate 16 Corridor Joint Development Authority Board