Atlanta Gas Light contractors are threatening to pull out of a Laney-Walker cleanup project and delay the removal of contaminated soil there unless the Augusta Commission signs off on an environmental plan by the end of the month.

That plan - which will remove contaminated soil from several acres of city-owned property, including the Augusta Canal - is without several "quality of life" improvements to the area that were included in earlier cleanup plans, such as rewatering the Augusta Canal, improving stormwater drainage in the area and installing bicycle paths.

"What they're currently proposing is different than what they initially proposed," City Attorney Jim Wall said.

Atlanta Gas Light officials said they no longer can afford that work, nor will the state Public Service Commission reimburse them for it, in part because they have improved the technology being used to clean up the contamination.

The original cleanup plan was to dig out the contaminated canal channel, widen it and concrete the area in to ease maintenance and improve water flow. Contractors later decided on a new technology called oxidation that involved injecting hydrogen peroxide below the canal bottom to neutralize contamination, then place a liner over the top.

That plan was approved by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources' Environmental Protection Division in December.

"When we felt resistance from Augusta, we went back to EPD with a plan that did not require us to do aesthetic work and required us to focus only on remediation," said Shawn Davis, a spokesman for Atlanta Gas Light's Augusta cleanup project.

Mayor Bob Young said Atlanta Gas Light never asked the city for permission to change the cleanup plans.

"They took a revised cleanup plan to EPD, saying the city signed off on it, and the city had never seen it," Mr. Young said Monday in a telephone interview. "We've got too much at stake here to just blindly let this thing fall into place.

"If they want to back up, we'll let them leave. The point is, at some time, they'll be back in, but that work will be done, and it will be done in a way the city agreed to."

In January, Atlanta Gas Light broke ground on the two-year, $40 million cleanup effort to remove contaminated soil from the site of a former manufactured-gas plant on Eighth Street at Walton Way. All the work that has been done so far has been done on Atlanta Gas Light-owned or private property.

The next 1 1/2 years, however, are to be spent removing contamination that has spread to the surrounding soil and water on public property, including in the canal.

In a letter to the Augusta Commission, Mr. Davis said the environmental cleanup company performing the work, Williams Environmental Services Inc., is "concerned that Augusta's current inaction will prevent Williams from implementing the cleanup plan on Augusta-owned properties, likely forcing us to demobilize our equipment and services."

He wrote that in order to meet "state-imposed deadlines," Atlanta Gas Light must have approval for a cleanup plan by the end of this month.

Mr. Wall said Monday that he is scheduled to meet with an Atlanta Gas Light attorney Wednesday to discuss the continuing cleanup plan, but he said the burden is on the gas company to complete the cleanup job and do it correctly.

Dayton Sherrouse, the executive director of the Augusta Canal Authority, called the negotiations between city and gas officials frustrating.

"We're stuck between a rock and a hard place," he said, explaining that he wants to see the project completed correctly but also quickly. "It concerns me, because it takes a long time to get mobilized, and I'd hate to see them pull out and come back at a later date.

"It could be done a lot quicker to keep the crews out there working."

"They took a revised cleanup plan to EPD, saying the city signed off on it, and the city had never seen it." - Mayor Bob Young

Reach Heidi Coryell Williams at (706) 823-3215 or heidi.williams@augustachronicle.com.