Hartsfield Airport could be

in hot water over an early January spill of deicing agents that found

their way into Fayette and two other counties' water supplies.

A state Environmental Protection

Division official revealed this week that, contrary to earlier reports

of a spill of only 250 gallons of chemical, the airport spilled "at

least 30,000 gallons" directly into the Flint River.

Bert Langley of EPD's Emergency

Response Program said the state agency expected by today to have mailed

the airport administration a proposed consent order requiring both short-term

and long-term solutions to the problem ... solutions that could get very

expensive, he said.

Airport officials were unable

to respond to The Citizen's requests for comment by deadline. The office

of Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin did not return phone calls on the matter.

"It's a big deal,"

said Langley. "I don't expect the airport to just sign [the consent

order]. We would require that they immediately come up with a way to not

have that happen again in the short term, and then there's a long-term

order for them to modify their facilities," he said.

"It could be a very expensive

operation," he added.

The reason for the spill, he

said, is a "fatal flaw" in the design of deicing facilities,

adding that the design is in clear violation of both state and federal

law.

The system is designed so that

drains under the deicing pads funnel the fluid into a sanitary sewer system

for treatment before being released into the storm water system, which

drains into the Flint River, a major source of drinking water for Fayette,

Clayton and Spalding counties.

But the drain pipes can hold

only about 80,000 gallons of fluid at a time, Langley said. If more deicing

agent than that is pumped into the drains, there is no reservoir to catch

it, he said, so it flows directly into the storm water system and thus

into the Flint.

"There are quick ways

to fix that, and fairly inexpensive to initiate, but expensive to operate,"

he said.

EPD also is looking into the

practice of some airlines that deice their planes at their gates rather

than on the deicing pads. It's yet to be determined whether those airlines

have drainage systems that connect to the sanitary sewer, Langley said.

Further complicating the situation

for Hartsfield, Langley said, EPD will now want to review the airport's

entire pollution prevention program, giving attention to every pollutant

used in operations there, from jet fuel to fire-fighting foam.

"It has to be revised

now. We're going to have to examine that real carefully," he said.

"We're talking about everything at the airport in terms of how it's

segregated from the storm water."

He said the airport's storm

water permit is clear. "They're allowed to discharge storm water,

and that's all."

Asked how the airport managed

to design and build a deicing system that violated regulations, Langley

said EPD is looking into that, too. But he said it's not EPD's general

practice to inspect such systems when they are built.

With licensed engineers designing

the systems, he said, they're supposed to done correctly.

EPD is not asking for any punitive

fines in the consent order, Langley said. "We would rather not argue

over money, but get this problem fixed," he said. "At a point

where Atlanta has already got some fiscal problems, we decided to ask

for no monetary settlement.

"If we can't come to an

amicable agreement, then we may have to take other routes including possible

fines," he added.

Meanwhile, testing of water

from Fayette homes where residents complained of a "sickeningly sweet"

odor in the weeks following the snow storm continues to indicate that

the water is safe, Langley stressed. He said he is "almost certain"

that the odor is the result of the deicing spill, even though detectable

levels of glycol, the main chemical in the deicing process, have not showed

up in the water.

"Everything we have seen

inidicates that there just is no health issue," said Langley. "Our

toxicologist looked at it real carefully."

Tony Parrott, director of Fayette's

water system, said continual flushing of fire hydrants seems to be slowly

succeeding in getting the smell out of the water. With 460 miles of pipe,

it's taking some time to flush the entire sytem, he said.

"It's down to just a few

calls," he told The Citizen Friday.

Parrott said in addition to

testing that EPD has done, he sent some samples to a private lab as well

with the same results - no detectable levels of glycol.

The problem cropped up when

about 50 residents of south Peachtree City phoned the Water System to

complain of the smell about a week and a half after the snow storm. The

system shut down its South Fayette Treatment Plant, which draws water

from the Flint, called in the EPD and asked that the water be tested for

that and other contaminants. The system also added activated carbon to

remove chemicals from the water.

The plant was reopened two

weeks ago, after its equipment and holding ponds were flushed.

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