Wednesday, October 11, 2000

By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@TheCitizenNews.com

Fayette County commissioners want more information before they decide what to do about septage.

Finding a new place to dispose of the solid and liquid that is pumped out of Fayette's 17,000 septic tanks has been the subject of numerous meetings of the staff Environmental Committee and the county Water Committee.

After hearing a report from the committees, commissioners directed the Water Committee to study the possibility of coming to an agreement with a public sewer facility that will accept the county's waste.

That solution would probably require that the county build a pretreatment facility at the sewer plant, costing about $1 million.

Septage is more caustic and toxic than regular sewage, because it is kept in septic systems for months and years without exposure to oxygen. Environmental laws don't allow it to be disposed of in sewage treatment plants without pretreatment.

Water Committee officials will talk to sewer operators in Fayetteville, Peachtree City and surrounding areas to explore the possibility of a joint agreement, and County Attorney Bill McNally and consultant Jim Mallett will explore the technical and legal ramifications of such an agreement.

Concerns about the future disposal of septage came up after operators of Clayton County's W.B. Casey sewer plant informed Fayette's Water Committee that the plant may one day stop taking septage from outside Clayton County.

Currently, private septic tank companies take Fayette's septage to the Clayton plant and pay a fee to dump it there. But as the plant nears its capacity to pretreat the effluent, Clayton customers will be given priority, 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 county officials.

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 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 Water 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.

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