Nobody knows yet how much, but impact fees for commercial and industrial developments in Peachtree City apparently are going up.

Members of the Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) and the Peachtree City Development Authority danced around the topic at the recent joint meeting. WASA manager Larry Turner said the discrepancy between charges for residential tap-ons and those for businesses is really noticeable, and that the authority continues to study whether actual costs of connections and lines are being recovered in fees charged.

Turner said a residential developer pays about $5.15 per "treated gallon" of estimated wastewater, "while an industrial user pays about $1.30 per gallon, and I guarantee the treatment plant doesn't know the difference." Rate charges for water and sewer are the same "as they were when we acquired the system from PCDC," Turner said, and there are no plans to increase rates. (The Peachtree City Development Corp. is now known as Pathway Communities.)

Development authority chairman John Gronner and member Tate Godfrey encouraged the water authority to continue to work with economic development groups to help provide ways to attract "compatible" industries.

"It's not in our plan to go out and find a plant that will use tremendous quantities of water," Godfrey said, "and we know that in 99 percent of our negotiations, we're in competition with other areas. We just need to keep the lines of communication open for incentives for companies to come here, to avoid prohibitive up-front costs. I agree that companies need to pay their way, but we need to consider long-term benefits for the future."