By Al Hackle, Statesboro Herald.

STATESBORO — In response to concerns raised by Ogeechee Riverkeeper in a threat of a lawsuit, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to re-evaluate its October 2022 permit for the Bryan County Megasite – where Hyundai Motorgroup’s electric vehicle Metaplant is now nearly built – by considering the volume of water to be pumped from four proposed wells in southeastern Bulloch County.

Those four wells, including two with a requested combined capacity of up to 3.125 million gallons per day to be owned by Bulloch County and two with a requested capacity of up to 3.5 mgd to be owned by Bryan County, would supply water to the Hyundai plant and possibly other new users. The wells remain the subject of a separate, state permitting process through the Georgia Environmental Protection Division.

The Army Corps of Engineers has jurisdiction over wetlands and streams considered “waters of the United States.” Its Oct. 4, 2022 permit for the nearly 3,000-acre Megasite in the Ellabell area of Bryan County allows permanent impacts on 221.36 acres of wetland, 763 linear feet of intermittent stream and 1.58 acres of ditch in association with the electric vehicle factory.

As a small environmental watchdog organization, Ogeechee Riverkeeper, or ORK, is proud of its success in getting the Corps to reconsider the permit and take into account the effects of groundwater withdrawn from the Florida aquifer and potentially discharged into streams, said Ben Kirsch, ORK’s legal director. But this is not expected to block or have any direct effect on the EPD’s pending decision on issuing the well permits, he acknowledged in a phone interview.

“My understanding is that it will not affect the EPD process,” Kirsch told the Statesboro Herald. “The groundwater withdrawals are a state issue. States, in this case Georgia, can issue the permits however they see fit according to their laws and regulations. This is a parallel process going on. Obviously, there’s significant overlap between the two, but whatever the Corps determines, the state can still issue the permits.”

However, Bryan and Bulloch counties did not apply for the EPD well permits until nearly a year after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the Clean Water Section 404 permit for impacts on wetlands and streams. Not informed that such wells would be needed, the Corps did not consider their effects during its permitting process, agency officials say now.

That process is supposed to take “a larger, holistic look at the whole project, how all the activities on the site, all of that together, affects aquatic resources. So that’s fish habitat, that’s drinking water supply,” Kirsch said.

“The concerns that we raised were more to do with drinking water supply and how it would affect the quantity of water, and whether wetlands would dry up, whether stream flows would be reduced or if springs will be reduced or go dry,” he said.

Threatened to sue

Ogeechee Riverkeeper sent a notice of intent to sue to the Corps of Engineers on June 3, alleging that the agency did not complete required steps and overlooked water supply concerns in issuing its permit.

Kirsch, ORK Executive Director and Riverkeeper Damon Mullis and Don Stack, a Savannah attorney who has long represented Ogeechee Riverkeeper and been involved in environmental advocacy, met Aug. 9 with Ellen Spicer, assistant district council to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and two other officials of the Corps’ Savannah District.

Besides the permit process, the “water supply as a ‘known’ issue in the region,” the ORK’s comments and public participation in the process, another topic of the meeting was “a path forward including the potential to avoid litigation,” Spicer summarized in an Aug. 23 letter to Stack.

While Spicer informed Stack and the Riverkeeper organization of the Corps of Engineers decision, another letter on the agency’s letterhead went out over the signature of Col. Ronald J. Sturgeon, the Corps’ Savannah District commander and district engineer, to Hugh “Trip” Tollison and the Savannah Harbor-Interstate 16 Corridor Joint Development Authority, or JDA, and Commissioner Pat Wilson of the state Department of Economic Development.

The JDA and the state, through its Economic Development Department, prepared the Bryan County Megasite and provided it to Hyundai Motor Group for development.

Not necessarily ‘negligible’ 

Sturgeon’s letter admits that in its evaluation for permitting the Megasite, the Corps of Engineers “determined that the project would result in negligible impacts on municipal and private water supplies, and that no water withdrawal permits would be required from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Environmental Protection Division (Georgia EPD).

“This determination was made in reliance on information you provided during our review of your application,” the letter tells Tollison and Wilson. “However, in July 2024, the Georgia EPD Watershed Protection Branch released four draft groundwater withdrawal permits for Bryan County and Bulloch County.”

After citing regulations that say the Corps may re-evaluate a permit decision based on a failure to comply with terms and conditions; on information having been false, complete or inaccurate; or on significant new information arising, the letter interprets the situation as a discovery of new information.

“Based on the release of the Georgia EPD draft permits, the Corps has determined that new information has surfaced regarding the effects the project may have on municipal and private water supplies, and that re-evaluation of our permit decision regarding our effects determination for water supply is warranted,” the letter states.

The letter then instructs the Savannah Harbor-Interstate 16 JDA and the state Department of Economic Development to “provide an assessment of effects the project may have on municipal and private water supplies, including whether the anticipated drawdown of the Floridan aquifer would result in any drainage of aquatic sources.”

It further states that the assessment should include any modeling or data on groundwater and surface water that has been collected. The Corps of Engineers is giving the JDA and state 10 days to acknowledge receipt of the letter and confirm that they will provide the requested information, but the letter sets no further timeline for the review.

Nothing in the letter suggests that the Corps would rescind the permit. Instead, the letter states that “the Corps may modify the permit to include special conditions to compensate for these impacts.”

“These considerations should have been taken into account from day one, but we are encouraged to see that the (Corps of Engineers) will finally review these issues in full,” Mullis, the Ogeechee Riverkeeper executive director, said in a press release Saturday. “Once all of the data is on the table, we urge the Corps to independently and vigorously vet and verify this information in its re-evaluation, and to be transparent with the public.”

The Associated Press, in a story by reporter Russ Bynum, reported that Sara Lips, a spokesperson for the EPD, said the extra federal scrutiny is “unlikely to impact or delay” a final decision on the well permits.

Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America said in a statement Monday that it will help to provide the Corps of Engineers the information it needs, Bynum also reported.

“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,” the company’s statement said.

“We never purposefully withheld anything,” said Tollison, the Savannah Joint Development Authority president and CEO, as quoted in the Associated Press story. He reportedly expressed confidence that the re-evaluation won’t delay the project and said, “There’s enough water for everyone.”