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Georgia official says solar farms are polluting waterways

Lake Lanier, a reservoir northeast of Atlanta, generates hydropower as its water is released from a dam into the Chattahoochee River. More than 6 million people depend on water from the reservoir.
Greg Allen
/
NPR
Lake Lanier, a reservoir northeast of Atlanta, generates hydropower as its water is released from a dam into the Chattahoochee River. More than 6 million people depend on water from the reservoir.

An official with the state Environmental Protection Division says runoff from a growing number of giant solar farms is becoming a major source of pollution for Georgia’s rivers and streams.

Huge solar farms of up to 1,000 acres are being built on south Georgia’s sandy soil which is vulnerable to erosion of sediment. Currently there are about 35,000 acres of solar farms spread over 54 miles representing 0.9% of the land in Georgia with landowners receiving about $2.9 billion a year leasing their land to Georgia Power alone.

Jeff has delivered morning news at WUGA Radio for more than a decade. He was among a team at CNN that won a George Foster Peabody Award in 1991 for an educational product based on the fall of the Soviet Union. He also won an Edward R. Murrow Award from Radio Television Digital News Association in 2007 for producing a series for WSB Radio on financial scams. Jeff is a graduate of the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University (MBA) and holds a BS in Business Administration from Campbell University, both in North Carolina.