Pathway

Communities has agreed to reevaluate the extent of ground

water contamination at the "Peach Pit," a

former construction landfill that has been closed.

An

environmental activist and the Fayette County Commission

have asked Pathway officials to reevaluate the extent of

contamination at the site. Pathway wants the land annexed

into Peachtree City, but concerns have arisen about

whether the contamination has spread.

Back in

1994, carbon disulfide was found in ground water samples

on the Peach Pit property. Those results were supplied to

the state Environmental Protection Division (EPD), which

determined that the contamination was not high enough to

require that it be cleaned up.

EPD based

that conclusion on information that was provided back

then by Peachtree City Development Corporation (PCDC),

the predecessor to Pathway Communities, which still owns

the Peach Pit property.

Though the

company is not required to retest or cleanup the

contamination, Pathway decided to conduct the new round

of environmental studies anyway, said Jerry Peterson,

vice president of planning for Pathway.

"We

may have done it on our own anyway," Peterson said.

"But we agreed to do it as a condition of the

zoning. It wasn't really an issue."

Environmental

activist Dennis Chase said he is worried about the tests

not going further than the ones performed in 1994.

The closest

drinking well to the contaminated site was between one

and two miles away, according to EPD records that were

filed in 1994 by PCDC.

Those

records indicated that no humans have been exposed to the

carbon disulfide contamination. The records also showed

that the source of the contamination was unknown.

The site

was not well secured when it operated in the 70s and 80s

and someone could have dumped the chemical there,

Peterson said.

The

property is still owned by Pathway, Peterson confirmed.

If someone

decides to install a water well in the area, or if the

West Village development constructs new homes closer to

the Peach Pit site, the EPD might reevaluate the site,

said Merrill Frazier, a site inspector for the EPD.

reevaluation could possibly lead to the EPD requiring a

clean up, Frazier said, although that possibility may be

unlikely.

Pathway,

however, doesn't plan to put in any wells or build homes

closer than 300 feet to the Peach Pit, Peterson

confirmed. That makes a new study by the EPD unlikely.

Pathway has

already hired a firm to conduct new water tests

downstream of the Peach Pit, Peterson said. If those

tests show that more testing is needed, Pathway will

conduct those tests also, he added.