Wednesday, May 30, 2001
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Wednesday, May 30, 2001 |
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Water officials may hold off on dredging plans By DAVE
HAMRICK
The spectre of drivers being greeted by an empty Lake Peachtree as they enter Peachtree City on Ga. Highway 54 is prompting county water officials to move cautiously on their periodic dredging project. "With us being in a drought situation like we've been in ... I don't think anybody would want a clean lake down there with no water," said County Attorney Bill McNally during last week's meeting of the Water Committee. In a long-standing agreement with Peachtree City, the county Water System is responsible for periodically dredging the lake. The agreement calls for checking the lake every eight years to see if it needs dredging. The lake was dredged in 1986 and checked in 1994. City officials recently reminded the Water Committee that the next review is due in 2002. "They were interested in us going ahead and doing the review," said system director Tony Parrott, but if the review is done and it shows a need to dredge, then the project must be accomplished within six months. If drought conditions don't improve, it could take a long time for the lake to fill with water again once it's emptied for the dredging, McNally pointed out. "I suspect there will be some required dredging this time," said Parrott. The group took no vote on the matter. Consensus was to hold off for awhile. In another matter concerning Lake Peachtree, Parrott reported that the state Department of Natural Resources is in the process of rewriting its inventory of dams and wanted to know whether the Lake Peachtree dam should be reclassified. The dam is currently a category two, which means that there is no threat of loss of life should it break. "They're just making sure that nothing's been built downstream that would make it a category one," said Parrott. That's unlikely, he said, but it will take about a month for DNR to make that determination. In other business, the committee voted to recommend approval of the low bid of $694,054 from Kenny Shockley Plumbing for water line extensions, and voted to recommend offering the county's old water meters for bid. About 20,000 meters county-wide are being replaced with new ones that can be read using radio waves. The company putting in the new meters has offered $3 apiece for them, but committee members said they want to see if they can get a better offer.
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