Friday, February 21, 2003

WASA approves bonds for reservoir

By ALISA KING
Special to The Citizen

The South Fulton Municipal Regional Water and Sewer Authority and its member cities: Union City, Palmetto, and Fairburn is one step closer to building and operating a reservoir.

During last week's Fairburn City Council meeting, the City Council approved an operations and finance agreement of the water and sewage authority.

Member cities recognize that the authority, in order to fund the construction and operation of a water reservoir or reservoirs, will issue revenue bonds in an amount sufficient to achieve several objectives.

Part of the proceeds from the revenue bonds may be used to purchase Palmetto's existing waste water treatment plant, and its water reservoir provided that it is offered for sale to the authority at a fair market value established by an independent qualified person or firm and agreed to by Palmetto and the Authority.

The transmission lines for the raw water, potable water, and waste water will not be purchased by the authority.

The transmission lines for the raw water, potable water, and waste water will remain the property of Palmetto.

Estimated amount of revenue bonds is uncertain at this time.

The member cities' covenant obligate their tax bases to provide necessary funds should revenues from the project or projects be insufficient to regularly meet the debt service requirements of the originally issued revenue bond.

The extent of the obligation of the member cities is to make up any shortfall created by a lack of revenues to support the debt service requirements of the originally issued revenue bonds.

The shortfall, if due to the raw and/or potable water facilities, will be apportioned among the three cities based upon the percentage of water used in each city as compared to the total number of water used in all three cities combined.

This proposed formula for addressing the shortfall shall be updated on at least a semi-annual basis beginning six months after the date of the execution of this agreement.

The shortfall, if due to wastewater treatment facilities, will be apportioned to the member cities based on the percentage of capacity of the wastewater treatment facilities that is agreed to and approved by the governing bodies of each of the member cities.

According to the 2000 Georgia General Assembly, the authority shall serve the member cities only with the project or projects.

Once the project or projects are completely operational, the member cities agree to purchase all of their respective potable water requirements from the authority. The agreement states that:

The water requirements of the member cities represent the amount of potable water that customers located within the corporate limits of the respective member cities require on a daily basis.

Sales of potable water by a member city may only occur to the persons or entities located within the corporate limits of that particular member city.

A member city may not sell potable water to persons or entities located within the corporate limits of another member city.

Should any of the member cities desire to purchase potable water from the authority to be sold to other than a customer located within the corporate limits of the particular member city, the other two member cities must consent to this type of purchase.

According to Charles Corbin, engineer of Meek and Wood Inc., Fairburn is currently hooked on the city of Atlanta's water pipes mainly for emergency purposes. He stated that Fairburn wouldn't have to pay any extra for being connected to the water pipes because Fairburn will have their own reservoir soon.

"The reason behind such urgency to start building these reservoirs is for future protection," said Corbin. He says it was predicted that by the year 2030 there may be a water shortage.