Just across from an industrial stretch of warehouses and chain-link fences, the ground drops into a thicket of brush. Tucked behind the tall winter grass, is a shallow creek.
If you weren’t looking for it, you may have missed it entirely.
“Aren’t you so excited?” Hannah Palmer asked at the site, pointing out the headwater of the river. “You found the Flint!”
Palmer coordinates Finding the Flint, a group dedicated to restoring the visibility of Georgia’s second-longest river. Here at its urban source, the river is just an unassuming trickle. It travels a short distance before it is piped beneath the streets of East Point and Hapeville and disappears entirely under the massive footprint of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
It is a hidden neighbor to the world’s busiest airport. But as communities downstream recently learned, that proximity comes with risk.
In January, an estimated 20,000 gallons of jet fuel spilled into the river system from the airport, according to Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division (EPD).
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initially estimated the spill at about 10,000 gallons in February before later revising that figure upward.
Internal airport emails reviewed by GPB show officials calculated a higher estimate based on how long the leak may have been going undetected.
“While EPA stated 10,000 gallons, they also are not aware of the leak start date,” wrote Thomas Nissalke, the airport’s assistant general manager of planning and development, in an internal email reviewed by GPB.
In that same email, Nissalke says it appears the leak began Jan. 23 and continued for more than a week.
“We were made aware of the leak eight days later on Friday, Jan. 30,” Nissalke wrote. “We will conservatively assume that the fuel leaked for eight total days.”
They calculated an estimated 20,000 gallons reaching the river. Cleanup data later reflected a substantial amount of fuel in the river system.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, remediation contractors recovered more than 150,000 gallons of petroleum-contaminated water. Of that total, about 28,000 gallons was estimated to be jet fuel.
The EPA has classified the event as a “major discharge” affecting at least 6.5 miles of the river downstream.
‘Do Not Consume’ advisory hits community to the south
About 40 miles south of the airport in Griffin, Stephanie Eddy was at work when she saw a Facebook post warning residents not to consume the water.
That night, she noticed something was off in her own home.
“I took a shower at 8:30 and found out that there was a smell in the water,” Eddy said. “It smelled like fuel.”
Gov. Brian Kemp issued a state of emergency and the city of Griffin issued a “Do Not Consume” advisory.
State and local officials later said the smell was not caused by jet fuel, but by propylene glycol, a chemical used to de-ice aircraft.
Griffin City Manager Jessica O’Connor said testing found the compound in the city’s water system.
“It is propylene glycol that was in our clear well system at Harry Simmons,” O’Connor said Feb. 6. “When it gets mixed with chlorine and gets into the distribution system, it smells like fuel.”
O’Connor said propylene glycol is commonly used in products like food and cosmetics and is considered safe to consume. She said that’s why state regulators supported lifting the “Do Not Consume” advisory less than 24 hours after it was issued.
Still, for some residents, questions remain.
“It’s been very concerning living here and worrying about what’s in the water,” Eddy said. “I really hope that they work together as a team to come up with a solution so that we can all be safe and not have to worry about the water that our children are drinking or the water that they’re bathing in.”
Cleaning up a ‘major discharge’
The spill triggered a weeks-long cleanup effort.
Daily reports from the cleanup show crews using vacuum trucks and skimmers to remove fuel from the surface, while also collecting contaminated debris and oily residue along the riverbanks. At times, operations were slowed by weather and freezing conditions.
The airport’s spill prevention plan relies on “secondary containment” systems to keep fuel from entering stormwater drains, but the plan also acknowledges that if those systems fail, hazardous materials can reach the river.
At a February hearing at the state Capitol, Jeff Cown, head of Georgia’s EPD, addressed the spill, saying he didn’t believe this was a “compliance issue.”
“You know, you have to watch these things every day to make sure,” Cown told lawmakers.
In 2022, the airport was fined $40,000 for a 1,400-gallon spill, much smaller than of the volume recovered in this latest cleanup.
The investigation into the spill is ongoing.
The City of Atlanta’s Department of Aviation declined to comment on the delay in detection and whether fuel sensors or alarms were in place, citing a pending municipal court matter.
For Riverkeeper Gordon Rogers, the solution isn’t just better infrastructure. It’s a change in leadership priorities.
“My goal is to move sustainability and the containment of spills from being a yellow sticky on the side of somebody’s file cabinet to being the No. 2 thing on the general manager’s list after airport safety and customer service.”
But for Rogers, the core question still doesn’t have an answer.
“How are we going to keep this list of stuff from getting into the river?” he said. “It’s a really interesting question, and I don’t have an answer at the moment.”
