Recent mornings at South River Forest, south-east of Atlanta, have begun with workers driving tractors around, clearing paths and felling trees, guarded by more than 100 police officers.
The workers are taking the first steps in building an 85-acre, $90m police and fire department training center planned for the land, called “Cop City” by activists.
The police shooting last month of “Tortuguita” – one of dozens who camped in the forest during the last year-plus to protest the training center and a separate, corporate project threatening an additional 40 acres – helped bring the movement to national and international attention.
But this week, local residents took the fight to city hall – or rather, the county commission, a zoning appeals board and Fulton county superior court – in an attempt to stop the tractors while an appeal against Cop City is ruled on, based on claims that the project will contaminate a stream with sediment that runs through the forest, in violation of the Clean Water Act and state law.
Judging by a late Friday afternoon court ruling denying a temporary restraining order on the project, plus a county inspection of the forest site, that fight mostly resulted in losses.
“We’re back to where it started,” said Sam, part of the Atlanta Community Press Collective, an anonymous group of activists who use journalistic methods to monitor the project. She was referring to local politics, and the late 2021 Atlanta city council decision to lease the city-owned land for $10 per year to the Atlanta Police Foundation – despite the nearly 70% of more than 1,000 comments from residents opposing the plan.
One and a half years later, Amy Taylor, a resident who lives within 250ft of the forest – and who serves on a “community stakeholder advisory committee” meant to offer input on the training center – last week appealed the Dekalb county commission’s “land disturbance permit” to the city of Atlanta. The land is located in the county and owned by the city.
Emails obtained by open records request at the collective show that Dave Wilkinson, chief executive of the Atlanta Police Foundation, the nonprofit organization behind the project, responded to the appeal by stating his intention to “continue full speed ahead unless the county issues a stop work order”.
So it was that on Thursday, residents packed the Dekalb county commission’s monthly meeting to urge its members to support such an order – as the county’s own code appears to suggest it should have done as soon as the appeal was received, and until the appeal is heard by a zoning board, which will happen in April. Several days earlier, Ted Terry, former Georgia Sierra Club director and the only county commissioner opposed to building Cop City in the forest, also joined a petition to Fulton county superior court seeking a temporary restraining order against the foundation while the appeal is under review.
Despite the high profile of the case, it appeared the issue had, for now, obeyed the maxim, “all politics is local.”
A flurry of documents, legal and otherwise, has resulted, including a Dekalb County inspection report that claims the “path clearing” and “tree removal” occurring in the forest in recent weeks “are not defined as land disturbance,” said Andrew L Cauthen, county spokesperson. “Since there was no land disturbance, there’s nothing else for us to do.”
This caused Jackie Echols, board president of the South River Watershed Alliance and a plaintiff in the Fulton county superior court complaint, to say: “We’re in a situation where we’re just parsing interpretations of on-site conditions … earth is still being moved, and there’s heavy equipment … [and] we don’t have to redefine land disturbance!”
On Thursday, Alan Williams, project manager for the foundation – which has the distinction, among police foundations nationwide, of having the most employees, the highest-paid chief executive, the largest PPP loan during the pandemic and, in 2020, the second-highest amount of donations – filed an affidavit with Fulton county superior court.
Williams made no reference to the environmental issue at the heart of the appeal, and instead drew the court’s attention to how much the project is costing the foundation. Sixty million of the project’s estimated cost would come from its corporate donors, which include Chick-fil-A and Delta; the remaining $30 million would come from taxpayers. If the project is stopped while under appeal, Williams wrote, it would cost the foundation more than $2m a month, nearly half of which goes to paying 120 police officers.
“Nothing drives these issues more than money,” said Echols, who has been working to protect the South River watershed, which include the forest, more than a decade.
Meanwhile, at the Dekalb county commission meeting on Thursday, residents addressing the body included one who lived in the area 33 years, another for 23 years, and a third who called herself a fourth-generation resident. “I don’t want my children to grow up hearing explosions,” said the latter, referring to bomb testing that may occur at the training center.
The testimonies stood out in contrast to the steady drumbeat of Georgia elected officials – including Republican governor Brian Kemp and Democratic Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens – who have sought to reduce all opposition to the project as the work of “outsiders,” a trope that observers have noted has appeared in the south since at least the civil rights era to minimize any activism that includes people from other states.
Taylor, who lodged the appeal with the zoning board, also spoke at the meeting. “My community has no voice or representation, except for my voice,” she said. “This is one of the most notorious landscapes of environmental injustice. Atlanta can move the project, but you cannot move South River Forest.”
