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Water costs to be high for Hyundai
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Editor's note: This story contains corrections on numbers made by the editor. He used commas instead of periods in some spots. He regrets the error. 

Everything about Hyundai’s $5.45 billion Metaplant America is big.

That now includes the minimum prices the company has agreed to pay for water – which could add up to a minimum of about $9 million per year, according to a five-year agreement approved by Bryan County Commissioners on Tuesday.

The 19-page contract requires Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, or HMGMA, to buy a minimum of 2.5 million gallons per day at a rate of $12 per 1,000 gallons provided by the county through July 2025.

In or around Aug. 1 2025, Hyundai has agreed to buy a minimum of 3.25 million gallons per day from Bryan County, though there is an incentive to save the South Korean automaker money and lessen withdrawal from the aquifer – namely HMGMA will pay $2.50 a gallon for treated, or “reclaimed” water.

The agreement also calls for Hyundai, which is building and will run its own onsite treatment plant, to pretreat water before sending it to a wastewater treatment plant in Savannah and, later, Bryan County, in order to not interfere with the two wastewater treatment plants biological processes.

Savannah has a membrane bioreactor wastewater plant at Travis Field near Gulfstream capable of treating 4 million gallons of wastewater per day, and Bryan County is building a similar membrane bioreactor plant in North Bryan with the capacity to treat 5 million gallons per day.

The county’s agreement with HMGHMA doesn’t include the battery plant being built as a joint venture with LG. That will come separately, according to the documents.

The agreement is the county’s way of recouping money it is paying – largely through state funds and Georgia Environmental Finance Authority loans – to build the infrastructure to provide water and sewer to Metaplant America.

The cost for that and related water and sewer infrastructure in North Bryan is costing some $343.8 million, with just over half of it, $246 million, coming from state funding.

The difference is being made up through contributions from Bulloch County, the Savannah Economic Development Association, an existing Georgia Environmental Finance Authority loan of approximately $40 million and an additional $60 million loan from GEFA, according to county documents.

Hyundai has said it hopes to begin production in early 2025 if not sooner, and at full production will employ 8,100 at Metaplant America building some 350,000 electric vehicles annually.

Should Hyundai for some reason permanently close the plant, the agreement said, HMGMA will pay “a single lump sum termination payment calculated at 3.25 million gallons per day for each month or portion thereof counted from the date of water and wastewater service termination for eighty-two (82) months.

That would not be a penalty, the agreement goes on to say, but rather a “reasonable approximation … of expected damages” should the carmaker permanently close up shop. It notes “the actual damages … are difficult, or impossible to ascertain ….”

It defines a permanent closure as a period of six consecutive months.

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