Cities of Rockmart, Cedartown team up in lawsuit against County Government, GFL over sludge

The threats were made, and now the Cities of Cedartown and Rockmart have finally decided that enough is enough and a suit has been filed against Polk County’s government and landfill operator GFL Environmental over the sludge issue.

The two cities served the County and GFL Environmental with a suit in the Tallapoosa Circuit Superior Court that is more than 260 pages long on January 22. The County and GFL have since been served with the filing as well.

The suit comes between the parties after years of attempted negotiations and last year’s campaign to get the county to go back to court and seek a change in Judge Adele Grubbs’ order not allowing any sludge at all in the landfill.

The Cities of Cedartown and Rockmart previously disposed of their municipal sludge created from wastewater treatment into the Grady Road Landfill prior to the suit between the County government and GFL Environmental was settled. Judge Grubbs’ order amid that suit after the previous case was assigned to her as an outside judge from Cobb County Superior Court. The temporary order from 2019 required a number of areas both the County and GFL were required to undertake, including the exclusion of any sludge being added into the landfill.

The county has since made an agreement with GFL over operations and the collection and sale of methane gas generated by breakdown of solid waste.

The suit breaks down to this: the cities are seeking to end the prohibition against their sludge being added into the landfill, since it violates a previous Service Delivery Strategy agreement that has been in place since 1999 between the Cities of Cedartown, Rockmart, Aragon and Polk County’s government.

Read the full suit here:

The Service Delivery Strategy agreement comes with requirements that the county make the landfill available for the use of the cities, and the cities believe that also means that sludge generated from wastewater treatment – previously described as inert and without a smell by city officials and county commissioners during meetings in 2024.

Since the cutoff of allowing sludge into the landfill, the cities cite in the suit that the County has been in violation of the policy. The cities have since incurred more than $1 million in costs funded by taxpayers to dispose of the sludge elsewhere due to the temporary order put in place in 2019 by Judge Grubbs.

The cities previously asked in public sessions with the County to seek to get that changed since they were parties to the suit, only to be rebuffed by County Commissioners at the time, citing no real status change in the situation that would require the county to go back to Judge Grubbs and request the change.

The cities’ suit seeks to get the situation changed so that the landfill will accept sludge again, and financial relief for the cost of having to dispose of sludge since the 2019 order went into effect, and the cost of attorney’s fees for anything related to the lawsuit.

The cities put out a joint statement about the lawsuit:

Polk Today reached out to County Manager Matt Denton and County Attorney Brad McFall after being informed about the suit for comment, and so far have not received any official statement back about the matter.

Additionally, Polk Today has also left word with local GFL officials to seek more from their corporate offices on comment about the suit.

Both entities will be given an opportunity to speak out on the suit when they return contact.

Check back for updates as they become available.