Business park on city’s east side has septic trouble, wants to tap onto PTC sewer line

[Online: Why PTC should keep its sewer service inside the city limits — www.thecitizen.com/node/4261]

The Peachtree City Council is being asked to allow a development in unincorporated Fayette County to tap into city sewer lines along Ga. Highway 54 East.

The request for the existing Governor’s Square commercial-office complex close to the city’s northeast border will be considered at Thursday night’s City Council meeting.

Because of capacity problems with the development’s septic system, the health department has denied permits for new restaurants to move into the center, according to a memo from city staff to council members.

For the sewer line to be extended to the development, the connection would be made through existing right of way for the road, according to the proposal.

Doing so would put the sewer line directly in front of the Peachtree East shopping center. That could potentially trigger a state law that requires sewer hookups for developments within 500 feet of a sanitary sewer system, thus requiring Peachtree East to be served by city sewer.

Over the years, Peachtree City has kept its sewer lines within the city limits with very few exceptions. Fayette County does not have its own sewer system, which has in turn inhibited residential growth in the county due to the minimum lot size requirement for septic fields.

In 2006, the city council voted unanimously to deny a request from the city of Senoia to allow it to send up to 500,000 gallons of sewage a day to be treated at a city sewer plant.

Also in 2006, the council voted to allow a sewer line extension to a Scarbrough and Rolader development of 63 houses on 81 acres next to the Starr’s Mill school complex.

In an editorial column in 2006 about that decision (www.thecitizen.com/node/4261), editor and publisher Cal Beverly had this to say:

“Why not turn WASA loose to sewer as much of the unincorporated county as developers request?

“Because your vaunted Fayette/Peachtree City lifestyle will be sewered away with all the new sludge from massively dense new commercial and residential developments that sewer lines will allow.

“The only things standing in the way of Gwinnett traffic and Riverdale strip centers here in Fayette are zealously enforced county zoning restrictions and the need for at least one-acre lots to accommodate individual septic tanks.

“Take away the septic tanks, add in sewer lines, and your county is gone with the wind.

“That’s why the Peachtree City Council is so remarkably wrong on this breach of a long-standing taboo. The council, in extending sewer service beyond the city’s zoning laws and the city limits, will be acting as the prime agent to destroy the unincorporated county’s land use plan and zoning restrictions.”