GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — It reads like a nightmare: homeowners who live near a wooded area zoned residential, for more housing – are just finding out that a developer is asking the county to rezone the woodland for a garbage facility.
“I mean, we’re right here on the edge, it’s just yards away from my kids’ playset,” Gwinnett County resident Lindsey Chambers told 11Alive. “You know, with the smell and the rodents, and everything else that comes along with it.”
The plan has shocked people in the Loganville area. The Loganville business, called Southern Sanitation, is asking Gwinnett County to rezone 50 acres of woods off of Ozora Road from residential to industrial, to transform the tract into a waste transfer station. There, garbage collected from parts of Gwinnett and Walton Counties and possibly other areas would be brought, and sorted, before heading to landfills and other destinations.
“It’s unconscionable, I can’t imagine a waste station right here behind us,” said Rui Yockel.
“We may not see the operation, but we’re definitely going to hear it - 100 feet back here is not very far,” said Larry Rose, who is helping rally the community to try and stop the development. “It’s certainly close enough to be able to hear and smell.”
Rose said that, so far, 57 subdivisions, homeowner associations, in the area have signed up to work together to try to convince the Gwinnett County Commission to vote down the proposal and protect the area that thousands of people call home.
“It’s beautiful. It’s peaceful. The birds are chirping at night, you can hear the crickets with the frogs. It’s just gorgeous,” Rose said.
Shane Lanham, the Lawrenceville attorney representing the business and its CEO, Billy RayJohnson, said in the rezoning application filed with the Gwinnett County Planning Commission earlier this month, that the proposed garbage business would be “suitable” for the area because it is “adjacent to high-industry industrial uses” – a quarry is at one end of the woods. Since no other developers have stepped up to develop more single-family homes in the area, “the property does not have reasonable economic use as currently zoned.”
The application indicates that the facility would be “located as far away from adjacent residential structures as possible and closest to the adjacent quarry” and would include a “100-foot wide, natural, undisturbed buffer … to adjacent” homes. The facility would “not adversely affect … nearby properties,” the application continued.
Neighbors disagree, worried their property values would plummet, while big sanitation trucks would be driving up and down the two-lane Orzora Road and other streets that would connect the facility’s site to nearby highways.
“Heavy duty trucks backing up with their alarms constantly" would be disruptive enough, said Jim Yockel, but on top of that, "I think there’ll be a smell" from all that garbage.
Gwinnett County is just beginning to study the proposal to rezone the wooded area. The County Commission’s final decision could come in July. Meanwhile, residents are raising money, banding together and working to convince the county and developer to find another spot for the project.
“Away from the homes,” Rose said.
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