Wednesday, October 4, 2000

By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@TheCitizenNews.com

The septage problem will land in the lap of the Fayette County Commission today.

After discussing it a few times, the county Water Committee last week voted to pass along a report from the staff Environmental Committee, alerting commissioners that in the near future there may be no place to take septage the sewage that is pumped out of septic tanks.

The County Commission will hear a report on the problem during its regular monthly work session, today at 3:30 p.m. at the County Administrative Complex.

Commissioners will "tell us what they want to do with it," said Chris Venice, county planning director. "They can ignore it, act on it or table it."

Clayton County's W.B. Casey sewer plant currently takes in Fayette County's septage, which is hauled there by private companies.

But officials in Clayton County's Water and Sewer Authority have put Fayette on notice that its capacity to handle the septic tank effluent is limited, and Clayton County customers come first. Eventually Clayton will no longer treat septage from outside the county, officials warn.

Water Committee clerk Lisa Gillis recently contacted other surrounding counties, and none of them take out-of-county septage at their treatment facilities, according to Venice.

County consultant Jim Mallett has put together a cost study of one likely solution, building a plant in Fayette County to treat the county's septage, and the Water Committee has included that information in its report to the commission.

Mallett said that solution would cost about a million dollars. Water Committee members also discussed paying another county, or possibly Peachtree City or Fayetteville, to increase their capacity to handle septage.

The county could take the approach of leaving the matter to the private septage companies to figure out, said County Attorney Bill McNally, but he added, "There may be no place for the folks hauling it out of here to put it."

In its issue paper, the committee points out that illegal dumping of septage has happened in the past and could happen again if there's no legal dumping place available.

The Environmental Committee's recommendation is that the county provide a pretreatment facility and pursue a joint venture with some other public sewer system for disposal of the pretreated effluent.

Building the pretreatment facility could be paid for by charging a fee of $1 a month to homeowners.

The county also expects that new federal regulations will require building a treatment facility for storm water, and homeowners also may be charged a "utility" fee to pay for that, the committee's position paper says.

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