Two local items get my attention: neighboring Senoia's plea for sewer service from Peachtree City, and nonchalant talk about annexing nearly 1,000 acres on Peachtree City's west side.

First, the sewer. I appreciate Councilwoman Annie McMenamin's question at last week's council meeting. She asked, "Didn't we promise not to extend sewer service outside the city limits when we bought the system?"

Yes, ma'am, you sure did. I was there, in that conference room in City Hall where Mayor Bob Lenox, City Manager Jim Basinger and Mrs. McMenamin held a news conference announcing formally what had already been decided in secret: the city was buying privately owned Georgia Utilities Co. for a bond issue totalling about $29 million.

I even asked the question of Lenox: Is this for Peachtree City only, or do you intend to supply sewer service beyond the few areas required in the purchase contract?

There was no waffling: Lenox answered that he couldn't imagine a situation where the city would ever want to sell its sewer service beyond city residents.

In fact, Lenox emphasized, the water and sewer authority couldn't even talk with anybody else about such a subject without getting permission first from the city council.

We duly printed that pledge in The Citizen. The purchase went through, the sewer bonds were sold, the controversy over the secret sewer negotiations went away, and the city went into the business of providing sewer service to its own citizens.

Well, just last week, the council gave that "couldn't be imagined" permission to the WASA to begin talks with Senoia to provide 300,000 gallons a day treatment for the Coweta County town on Peachtree City's southwestern border.

Beyond the issue of an apparently forgotten public pledge, I'm disturbed that the council so blithely sails into a precedent-setting situation of becoming a for-hire-to-anyone sewer provider.

Two things bring unwanted density: sewer and annexation.

Senoia is a municipality in another county, with its own rules and visions for future growth. Those rules, and that vision, likely differ from Peachtree City's. Yet, now WASA wants to explore turning on the sewer tap for outside users. I don't like it.

That other issue, annexation, deserves a future column all its own. The Peachtree City Council is moving inexorably toward a decision to bring into the city all those hundreds of now-forested acres now in the unincorporated area of Fayette County. That's the area north of Ga. Highway 54 and west of Ga. Highway 74, all the way to Line Creek and the Coweta County line.

Where that area now is zoned mostly A-R with no sewer service, the city seems to want to get all the landowners to agree to a West Village plan that would increase the currently allowable housing density by a factor of five to 25.

Currently, that land would have to be rezoned by the county commission (now a slow-growth group), and it's unlikely the county would allow lot sizes under one acre at worst, two acres or more at best. And each lot would have to be on a working septic tank. Much of that wetlands area is unsuitable for septic tanks, further limiting its use and its density. The whole area is bounded on the east by CSX railroad tracks, further limiting its accessibility.

But, if Peachtree City has its way, the land will come in zoned for a range of commercial uses, apartments, condominiums and houses on lots well under a quarter-acre each and sporting a big, traffic-clogged bridge over the railroad tracks.

Do the math. If you dislike higher housing density, more traffic, overcrowded schools, the worst thing that could happen to that land would be for it to become part of Peachtree City.

Inside the city, the density would automatically add thousands of new residents requiring added city services, not to mention the addition of a couple of elementary schools and probably one more middle and high school.

Let it stay as is, in the county, and it will stay low density.

Which way would you prefer?

Better tell that to our city council.