County votes today on $16.5 million in water bonds to pay for Lake McIntosh construction

Three decades after it was first planned, a new lake is about to take shape on Fayette’s western border.

With construction on Lake McIntosh expected to begin this fall, Fayette County is planning to issue $16.5 million in bonds to pay for the remainder of the project.

At the same time the county expects to refinance current bonds and pay off several loans, all incurred for the water system, at a net savings of $1.8 million, said County Manager Jack Krakeel. The county commission is holding a special called meeting tonight (Wednesday) at 6:30 p.m. to consider issuing the necessary bonds.

The county has already spent about $6.5 million to acquire mitigation property and accomplish other tasks for Lake McIntosh. The 650-acre lake, which will straddle the Fayette-Coweta county line via the damming of Line Creek, is the final reservoir planned for Fayette and will cover the county’s growth into the 2030-2040 time range. The bulk of the lake will actually be within Coweta County. Line Creek forms the boundary between the two counties.

The county already has operational reservoirs in lakes Kedron, Peachtree and Horton. The new lake is about the size of Lake Horton and the size of lakes Peachtree and Kedron combined.

The proposed reservoir will yield 10.4 millions gallons per day for drinking water that will be processed at the county-owned Crosstown Water Treatment Plant on TDK Boulevard in Peachtree City, said county officials.

The Fayette County Water System currently has a total production capacity of 20.375 million gallons per day (MGD). This capacity includes the 13.5 MGD at the Crosstown Water Plant, and an additional .825 MGD from four wells at various locations. With the completion of the South Fayette Water Plant in the summer of 2001, the system now has an additional 6.0 MGD capacity.

The county currently has a capacity to support a population of up to 142,960, meaning that the addition of the 650-acre Lake McIntosh will support more than 200,000 people living in Fayette. Under 110,000 people now live in Fayette.

Fayette has already completed the pre-qualification of firms who will bid for the construction project, Krakeel said. The county is waiting on the results of a review of the dam construction plans by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which is expected back perhaps in the next 30 to 45 days, he explained.

Construction on the project is expected to take between 18 and 24 months, but it could take as long as 30 months from the groundbreaking for the lake pool to fill, depending on the weather, Krakeel noted.

Lake McIntosh has been in the works since the 1970s when county officials acquired the vast majority of property needed for the project.

The lake will be reached off an access road leading eastward from the current terminus of TDK Boulevard in Peachtree City.

Several years ago there was a strong movement to extend TDK Boulevard into Coweta County including construction of a bridge over Line Creek. But that project was quashed by a citizen uproar after a Coweta developer announced plans for a mega-development that would have fed a significant amount of traffic onto the TDK Boulevard extension and Ga. Highway 74 in Peachtree City.

Krakeel said the county has no plans to extend the lake access road to reach Coweta County. The road will not go beyond the dam and raw water intake area, he said.

While other communities in Georgia have struggled due to drought in recent years, Fayette has managed to stay ahead of the curve, keeping a 200-day water supply on hand even during the worst of the most recent drought, Krakeel said.

The new lake figures in an ongoing rezoning controversy in Peachtree City. Pathway Communities, owner of much of the land inside the city’s industrial park, wants to change 37 acres along the new lake to residential and commercial zoning for a high-end development called Callula Hills. That request is still pending before the City Council.