This story was originally published on February 4, 2025, and has been updated.
Kiya Stanford remembers clearly the fallout from the BioLab chemical fire that wrapped Conyers and surrounding areas in a cloud of toxic smoke in September.
She recalls the pungent odor that lingered in the air for several days; the fear of exposure experienced by immunocompromised residents; the headaches, shortness of breath, and other ailments sustained by otherwise-healthy people.
“I saw, smelled, felt the implications of that,” said Stanford, a 27-year-old Decatur native who lives just 10 miles from the troubled facility. “Oftentimes you see things in more-industrial parts of the country … but seeing that it could happen in your backyard, I think that was a wake-up call.”
The chemical mishap that took place last year inspired Stanford and other concerned citizens to assemble at Atlanta’s Gold Dome in January to advocate for legislation to protect communities that are at risk of facing environmental injustices.
The Georgia Coalition for Environmental Policy and Protection, a group of environmental and science organizations from across the state, organized a day of action to find solutions that advocates say could benefit Black communities that have experienced historic burdens from pollution.
“If you’ve got air pollution, water pollution in a county, it impacts everybody, but a lot of times brown and Black communities are more impacted because typically they’re already in a situation where they have had to endure legacy pollution,” said Kim Scott, executive director of the environmental group Georgia WAND.
Stanford was particularly interested in pushing what the coalition refers to as the Bad Actor Bill, a proposed policy that would give the state’s Environmental Protection Division (EPD) more legal power to deny permits to businesses that have previous environmental violations on their record. The legislation was previously sponsored in last year’s General Assembly session by a group of Republican state representatives, but it failed to advance out of the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee.
By the end of Georgia’s 2025 legislative session, which wrapped in April, the Bad Actor Bill was neither proposed or sponsored.
Scott said businesses with poor environmental track records tend to want to move into other areas once they successfully set up shop in one community.
“When they expand, they’re taking all of their bad practices with them to the next location,” she said.
“[Other municipalities] have no idea that they were a bad commercial neighbor, a bad business in another location, and they’ll go on and say, ‘Hey, it’s good for business,’” Scott adds. “Elected officials a lot of times say, ‘Hey, it’s creating jobs’ but … all money is not good money.”
Last year’s fire at BioLab’s Conyers facility caused thousands of residents to evacuate their homes, while many more were mandated to shelter in place for days. The incident — reportedly caused by a water-reactive chemical becoming wet due to a malfunctioning sprinkler — also caused chemicals to drift into the metro-Atlanta area. The ordeal is now the center of multiple lawsuits.
The U.S Department of Labor cited BioLab on April 7 for four serious and two “other-than-serious” violations due to the chemical fire. The department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration found in their investigation of the facility that improperly stored hazardous chemicals caused the fire, thus proposing that the company pay $61,473 in penalties.
Amy Sharma, executive director of Science for Georgia, a science education and advocacy organization, points to the company’s prior violations and citations by Georgia’s EPD as justification for the Bad Actor bill, which she and other advocates hope will be proposed during this year’s legislative session.
“The problem with these fines is that they’re really low, and they’re not really a deterrent,” said Sharma.
The persistent impact of cumulative pollution
Rockdale County — the majority-Black community where Conyers is located — contains more than 600 industrial facilities, according to an Environmental Protection Agency database.
Scott says communities of color have historically and disproportionately faced the burden of pollution in the United States and are experiencing the impacts of legacy pollution.
The Georgia Coalition for Environmental Policy and Protection hoped to address these disparities through a proposal that would create a study committee to investigate the cumulative effects of pollution across the Peach State. If implemented, the committee would have allowed state legislators to visit and speak with residents in impacted communities. Depending on their findings, they could propose corrective policies or initiatives.
“[Legislation] will not erase past harms, because we suffer from legacy pollution,” said Treva Gear, the Georgia campaign manager for the Dogwood Alliance, a Southern environmental group. “Our people are sick, have cancer, and this is generational, because of those industries that have existed in our communities.”
HR100, the bill that would’ve created the study committee, did not advance beyond the House Natural Resources and Environment committee by the end of the 2025 legislative session.
Environmental activists have been targeting cumulative pollution in recent years, as there are few federal protections in place for communities that have multiple pollution-emitting facilities. Current federal regulations generally only consider one polluting source at a time, making it difficult to fully address cumulative pollution effects.
Gear said passage of new laws could help “change the path of protection for our communities, and maybe keep some of those industries out and call some consideration for where they’re putting these industries.”
Georgia’s environmental justice barriers
Environmental justice advocates say Georgia continues to prioritize being a top contender for businesses to operate, which poses challenges for them.
On a federal level, environmental regulation rollbacks and removal of environmental justice initiatives loom as President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, an international treaty that aims to reduce global warming.
In that same executive order, Trump also cancelled former President Joe Biden’s executive order that established the Justice40 initiative, which aimed to direct 40% of climate investments to underserved communities. The website for the Climate & Economic Justice Screening Tool — created during Biden’s presidency to help identify which communities were in need of Justice40 investments — was subsequently taken down.
“It makes our push that much harder,” said Gear of the Trump administration’s early policy rollout. “It’s probably going to be an uphill battle, but we will keep pushing. For those communities that are most impacted, and have been for decades and decades, it has been the story of our lives.”
