Even though its new sewer system has not been totally connected, the city of Senoia is looking at aggressively expanding its capacity.
The City Council heard Wednesday night the existing plants capacity of 490,000 gallons a day will only meet the needs of the residents until 2010.
City engineer Ben Turnipseed told the city that the system would have to be expanded to meet the explosive growth expected in the area. Currently, the city has 2,259 residents, but Turnipseed said the population would pass the 10,000 mark by 2025.
The engineer also said the city would have to decide what its sewer market should be, and whether the city wants to annex property into the town. He suggested providing sewer to in an area from East Coweta Middle School on the west to Line Creek on the east.
It would be much cheaper for you to provide sewer service to these residents, since you already have a sewer system built, he said.
Turnipseed said the city would have to meet with Coweta County to determine if the county wanted to provide sewer to the residents outside of the citys current borders.
Regardless, Turnipseed said the city should consider one of four options to increase the capacity of its current plant.
One option would have the city pumping its excess capacity to Peachtree City, but Turnipseed said that would cost more than $500,000 a year in operating costs.
His second option would be to upgrade the existing lagoon at the current plant so it could handle more than 1 million gallons per day. But the city would need 173 acres adjacent to the current plant to expand the land applications system.
The third option is building a new plant that would discharge the treated water into either Keg Creek or Line Creek.
Finally, the city could choose to upgrade the existing and retrofit it for resuseable treated water that could be used for watering purposes.
There are several golf courses in north Fulton County that use this as their irrigation system, Turnipseed said.
The engineer recommended the city pursue the third option and move towards getting the necessary permits since the entire process could take five years.
But City Councilman Bill Wood was not so sure the city should move forward.
One of the most unpleasant experiences in this city has been the implementation of this sewer system, he said.
Wood asked the city engineer if he had a projection of what the build-out would be for the undeveloped acres within the current city limits. Turnipseed said that he didnt have those numbers, but could probably provide them within two months.
The City Council told the engineer to move forward with the projections and would not make any further decisions until they had all the data.