It was a moment 30-plus years in the making.

Local officials today celebrated the official groundbreaking for construction on Fayette County’s new Lake McIntosh reservoir.

The lake will span 650 acres, much of which is technically in Coweta County, providing a projected 10-plus million gallons of day in drinking water to Fayette County.

The long-sought lake was projected in the 70s to be the county’s first reservoir. However, it will be the last, following in the footsteps of lakes Kedron and Horton.

The lake will be along Line Creek but will not be filled by the tributary. Instead it will be filled by rainwater, and officials have projected that could take a year or so, depending on the precipitation, of course.

The contractor for the $8.23 million project is Brad Cole Construction. The project was initially projected to cost $10 million.

The lake will stretch just south of Ga. Highway 54 West in Peachtree City southward toward Falcon Field Airport. Construction, including that of the dam on the southern portion of Line Creek, is estimated to take two years.

To celebrate the occasion today, a host of former county commissioners and water committee members were invited to attend the groundbreaking ceremony. They were recognized during a brief presentation by current county commission Chairman Jack Smith, who thanked them for keeping the lake plan alive for so many years.

The groundbreaking will mean a little more to former Peachtree City mayor and Fayette County commissioner Chip Conner, who celebrated his 70th birthday on the same day as the groundbreaking.

Conner was one of many county officials who in ways big or small helped shepherd the project to its current “green light” status.

To date the water system has spent more than $7 million in land purchases, mitigation sites, wetland credits, studies and consultants for Lake McIntosh. The commission recently approved issuing a $16.5 million bond to pay for the dam, reservoir, a pump station, mitigation site construction and wetland credits.

The marketable timber has been removed from the site and and the United States Geographical Survey has installed stream monitors on Line Creek.

The dam construction plans have been approved by the Georgia Safe Dams program and a stream buffer variance was granted by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.