DeKalb County committee hears EPD on monitoring near landfill, defers local program for 30 days

Commissioner Robert Patrick convened the Public Works & Infrastructure Committee and invited Georgia Environmental Protection Division staff to brief the panel on ambient air monitoring near the county's landfill. Diana Ozer, assistant branch chief of EPD's air protection branch, and Jamie Gore, who runs EPD's ambient monitoring program, described the state's network and the capabilities of the South Monitoring Station.

"The Environmental Protection Division protects and restores Georgia's environment," Jamie Gore said, describing continuous, hourly reporting of pollutant data and the agency's public reports and annual network plan. EPD staff said Georgia currently meets EPA's health-based National Ambient Air Quality Standards but that toxic compounds lack numeric ambient standards and are monitored for trend analysis and risk assessment.

EPD explained landfill controls in place near the county: landfill gas is collected and routed to generators; a thermal oxidizer and a flare were recently permitted at a renewable fuels facility, and the flare design aims to destroy the large majority of volatile organics before release. Diana Ozer summarized a prior multi-year study another county ran around a municipal landfill and said, "they ran this study for about two years. It cost them about $300,000," and that EPD's subsequent risk assessment found none of the measured toxics would cause long-term population-level health effects.

Commissioners pressed EPD on community-level monitoring options. EPD staff declined to endorse specific brands but said low-cost sensors such as PurpleAir can be useful for PM2.5 trend detection and can be colocated at a regulatory site for calibration. "We could certainly colocate them," Jamie Gore said, adding that siting, data quality assurance and wind data are essential for interpreting results.

The panel also asked about odor monitoring and public concern. EPD cautioned that odor detection thresholds are much lower than health-based thresholds: hydrogen sulfide can be smelled at parts-per-billion levels yet typically causes health concern only in the parts-per-million range. EPD staff said odor perception alone does not reliably indicate a health risk.

EPD noted operational constraints: the agency operates roughly 32 monitoring sites and said about 40 staff are needed to maintain the current network, so additional state-run sites would require resources or local partnerships. EPD advised stakeholders to submit requests during the annual ambient monitoring plan public comment window (mid-May) and offered to provide the Foresight/Eagle Point study list and technical siting criteria to county staff.

After questions and an agreement to gather the requested materials, commissioners voted to defer county action on placing additional monitoring for 30 days so staff and EPD could follow up. The committee asked county staff to return with the Foresight study details, sensor siting criteria and staffing/cost estimates for any proposed county program.

What happens next: EPD offered follow-up contacts and documents and the committee set a 30-day follow-up to consider additional local monitoring options.