By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@thecitizennews.com

Repeated sewage spills into Lake Peachtree, a major source of drinking water for Fayette County, are becoming a big problem, county commissioners say.

Commissioners Saturday voted to ask county attorneys to look for legal remedies.

The county has a drinking water intake facility on Lake Peachtree, but Peachtree City's Water and Sewerage Authority owns that city's sewer system, and the county has no control over it.

A spill of 1,500 gallons of raw sewage Jan. 30 was the second in recent months, and got commissioners' attention. A pump station on the lake stopped due to a power outage, and WASA's emergency plan operated properly, alerting workers who installed a generator to keep the sewage pumping.

But a worker installed the wrong generator, delaying restart of the pump and adding to the spill.

“I think we have a serious problem,” said Commissioner Greg Dunn. “We're being victimized by it because that is a major drinking water source for us.

“This entire county depends on those two lakes [Peachtree and Kedron] and we can't control it,” he added during the commission's annual planning retreat Saturday.

The only way to be 100 percent sure of preventing future spills would be to install a device that would cause sewage to back up into homes rather than spill into the lake, said Commissioner Glen Gosa, chairman of the county Water Committee. He didn't recommend that measure, Gosa said.

WASA general manager Larry Turner admitted that the Jan. 30 spill was due to human error, but said the sewer system has good emergency measures in place, which limited the spill to only 1,500 gallons.

“We do recognize the critical nature of that station, and we are going to improve it,” he said. WASA's capital improvement plan for 2000 includes replacing the pump station and installing a permanent generator.

Commissioners directed county attorneys to research legal means by which the county can gain more control over what happens to the lake.