Friday, Apr. 22, 2005

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Agreement could pave the way for rapid growth

By JOHN THOMPSON
jthompson@TheCitizenNews.com

A proposed sewer agreement between the city of Senoia and the Peachtree City Water and Sewerage Authority has residents on both sides of Line Creek buzzing.

“This is only the first draft and I think it’s one-sided, but this gives us a starting point,” said Senoia Mayor Bob Hannah, who provided the contract to The Citizen.

Since the beginning of the year, the city has been looking at ways to expand its existing capacity to accommodate the future growth expected in the city.

City engineer Ben Turnipseed told the city in January 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 to the Senoia City Council.

Turnipseed said the city should consider one of four options to increase the capacity of its current plant.

One option was having the city pumping its excess capacity to Peachtree City, which seems to be the direction the city is heading with the proposed agreement.

Under the agreement, Senoia would gain 500,000 gallons of sewerage capacity a day from the authority. In return, the city would build a pump station and force main and pay the authority $3 million. The city would pay $500,000 on the day the contract is executed and then pay $47,178 a month for 60 months, starting this June. The city would also be billed $3.50 per 1,000 gallons of treated sewerage on a monthly basis from the authority.

“This could be something really good for the city if we can get this done,” Hannah said.

Turnipseed’s other options were upgrading 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.