Thursday night, the Peachtree City Council unanimously denied a request to provide sewer access to Senoia, which would have doubled the town’s sewer capacity and paved the way for dramatic growth in the historic town across Line Creek.

Senoia wanted permission to make a deal with the Peachtree City Water and Sewer Authority, which was anxious to make up for a $500,000 shortfall expected in its budget due to the loss of its largest customer: the Photocircuits plant that closed down last year.

WIthout the Senoia deal, WASA will have to raise rates of residential customers by about $2.70 a month, adding up to $32.40 a year.

That was a decent price to pay for City Council members, who cited the additional traffic that growth in Senoia would put on Ga. Highway 74, which Peachtree City residents also use to get to the interstate.

Senoia administrator Richard Ferry said the town would seek other options to expand its sewer services. He said the town plans to annex unincorporated land along Ga. Highway 85 and in both directions on Ga. Highway 16.

The town projects that it will grow to nearly 11,000 people by the year 2026, almost four times the city’s current population of around 2,400.

By denying the sewer tap-in to Peachtree City’s Rockaway sewer treatment plant, Senoia won’t be able to grow as fast, indicated Councilwoman Judi-ann Rutherford.

“At the end of the day, the citizens of Peachtree City are who I’m responsible to and part of my responsibility to them is that we don’t do anything to the detriment of the quality of life that is the reason that people move here,” Rutherford said. “I think adding traffic is not a positive thing for the city.”

Councilman Stuart Kourajian said he was most worried about the increased traffic on Rockaway Road.

“Traffic is a major concern,” Kourajian said. “It’s gonna save us a couple of bucks — it sounds like — or it’s not going to raise our rates a little bit. But I’ll tell you congestion just outside our Peachtree City borders is what my concern is.”

Councilman Steve Boone indicated that he was not convinced that the proposed sewer deal didn’t give a price break to Senoia customers, as the town would be charged just $3.50 per 1,000 gallons of treated sewage compared to the charge of $4.38 per 1,000 gallons charged to Peachtree City residents.

“I want to be sure our citizens are getting a better break than Senoia,” Boone said. “We built it with our tax monies and the bonds and everything, and that’s a concern of our citizens right now.”

WASA General Manager Larry Turner said the Senoia figure was calculated based on what it would cost to treat the sewage only because Senoia would pay for and maintain its own sewer infrastructure.

The deal on the table would have Senoia paying $500,000 up front and another $2.5 million in financed payments to WASA as a tap-in fee.

Turner said even if the Senoia deal for up to 500,000 gallons a day were approved, it would still leave an extra 440,000 gallons a day in capacity even after accounting for annexation in the West Village, sewering homes currently served by septic tanks and other residential, commercial and industrial areas of Peachtree City.

Local biologist Dennis Chase noted that if the city needed to expand its sewage treatment plants in the future, it would either degrade the water quality of Line Creek significantly or it would be extremely costly to build the plant expansion so the wastewater can be treated at a higher level to maintain water quality.

“I kind of like what Dennis said: once we give it away we can never get it back,” said Councilwoman Cyndi Plunkett.