Peachtree City Mayor Harold Logsdon said Monday that the city isn’t about to open up the floodgates and seek to extend its sewer service beyond the city limits.

“We’re not seeking customers for our Water and Sewer Authority,” Logsdon said.

But Logsdon added that the City Council also has a duty to consider all out-of-city sewer connection requests on their own merit.

City Manager Bernie McMullen said he doesn’t think staff will recommend approval of out-of-city sewer requests on a routine basis.

The issue of extending the city’s sewer service beyond the city limits bubbled to the surface two weeks ago. The City Council unanimously agreed to allow sewer service for a 60-home subdivision in the unincorporated county, which does not offer sewer treatment services.

The lack of sewer service in the unincorporated county is a natural inhibitor to growth, particularly city-style high density developments. State regulations require minimum lot sizes of one acre to install a septic system.

The county commission has rebuffed numerous requests from property owners in the unincorporated county, including several churches, who have sought to get sewer access to their property.

In the instance considered by the City Council two weeks ago, the requested sewer connection was not being used to increase the density of the subdivision, Logsdon noted. He also argued that sewer service is much better for the environment than septic tanks.

Logsdon said he wouldn’t mind if the county commission exercises its discretion and voted not to approve the sewer connection for the subdivision, which is being developed by Rolader and Scarbrough Development of Fayetteville. Ultimately, he said, the county commission has the power to approve or deny the request.

The 60-home subdivision that would be connected to the sewer is at the city’s southern limits, adjacent to the Starr’s Mill school complex. Developer Bob Rolader noted that it would be better for the environment to have sewer instead of septic tanks because Whitewater and Camp creeks run through part of the property.

Logsdon noted that the city has excess sewer capacity, even after calculating the future needs for further development in the city’s industrial park, a proposed annexation on the city’s western side and all homes in the city that are currently served by septic tanks instead of sewer.

The recent closing of the Photocircuits plant in the city’s industrial park also added to the available sewer treatment capacity available on a daily basis. Photocircuits was one of the city’s largest sewer customers and had permits to dispose of 325,000 gallons of sewage each day.

The city is nearing build-out in terms of available land zoned for homes, which somewhat limits the city’s future needs for sewerage services.

The city has only reached outside the city limits three times to allow sewer service. In January 2001, the city council voted to allow Braelinn Church (now Dogwood Church) to hook up to the city’s sewer line for its campus which was partially in Tyrone and partially on the north side of Peachtree City.

Conditions on the approval included that the sewer service could not be extended beyond the church property, the church couldn’t provide the sewer access to a non-church entity by subdividing the property and the sewer service would be limited to the “church uses” on the property.

Council also previously approved sewer service for the Starr’s Mill school complex and for The Chimneys subdivision, which was covered in the contract for the sale of the sewer system from the Peachtree City Development Corporation to the city in 1997.

login to post comments