HIRAM, Ga. — The state Environmental Protection Division has documented at least a half dozen fish kills in Fulton and Paulding counties due to untreated sewage spills. Records show such spills are surprisingly commonplace.

Barely noticed by the cyclists on the Silver Comet Trail, there's a gate that leads to Paulding County's Coppermine Road Water Reclamation Facility. It processes much of the county's sewage.

Most of the time, it barely registers to nearby resident Pat Maddox.

"We have a stream behind our house and our grandkids play in that little stream," Maddox said in early November, as she and her husband, Tom, sat on a bench on the trail.

Yet the Coppermine plant has gotten ample attention from state regulators, who have catalogued 34 "illicit discharges" into streams over the

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