RICHMOND HILL – Bryan County officials voted Tuesday to sign an agreement with Bulloch County to monitor groundwater conditions and protect the Floridan Aquifer as development expands along Interstate 16 and within their counties.

The intergovernmental partnership establishes a five-year well monitoring program as part of the broader Well Mitigation Program. This program was created after the Georgia Environmental Protection Division issued groundwater withdrawal permits in October 2024 for the Interstate 16 Industrial Mega-Site, which includes the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America.

“This is really the first of its kind, and it’s something to be extremely proud of,” Ben Taylor, the Bryan County administrator, said. “This is a proactive step to monitor the effects. These projects reflect a strong partnership between Bryan and Bulloch counties and a shared commitment to responsible growth and environmental stewardship.”

Bulloch County established a contract with Georgia Southern University to implement the five-year program, which includes the monitoring of six wells, data collection, analysis and reporting to evaluate aquifer conditions and identify impacts from permitted withdrawals.

This comes after the drilling and permitting of these four wells (two owned by Bryan and two owned by Bulloch) sparked significant community opposition over water resource concerns. The wells were permitted to pump up to 6.6 million gallons of water per day to supply the industrial mega-site. However, by 2032, water supply to this site will come entirely from surface water from the Savannah River due to a large-scale water infrastructure project and partnership between Effingham County, Bryan County and the city of Savannah.

Bulloch County Commission Chairman David Bennett said the well monitoring partnership between Bryan and Bulloch will provide a clearer picture of aquifer conditions over time. It’ll also help Bulloch County decide the future of the wells once HMGMA is no longer using them.

“It won’t be theory,” he said. “We’ll have five years of data to show what’s going on. And we’re in one of the worst droughts we’ve seen right now in probably 20 years. So, we’ll have data through dry years and wet years … and when they’re pumping a bunch of water through ag wells. We can make real decisions on what we need to do.”

Bennett said preliminary data from the wells has shown the drawdown in water levels has been less than what models originally predicted.

“That’s encouraging,” Bennett said. “But we will continue to monitor and see what’s going on.”

He said he believes the future of the Bulloch County wells must be a community decision.

“I feel like we need to take some of that resource and use it here in Bulloch County,” Bennett said. “When I say use it, I don't think that we should be looking to use it for industrial use. I think that ground water should be used for human consumption and agricultural use.”

He also said the wells could be used to “channelize growth” within the county, helping manage the development sprawl he called one of the “biggest concerns” for the county.

The total cost of the monitoring program is not expected to exceed $235,008 over the course of the five-year monitoring program, with expenses split evenly between the counties’ mitigation funds. Taylor said no local tax dollars will be used; funding will instead come from contributions made by the counties’ development authorities and proceeds from industrial water sales.