It was nearly a month ago that the Peachtree City Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) voted to contact Senoia about providing sewer services. The only movement, to date, seems to be from the attorneys from both cities.
The WASA board of March 6 at the request of board member John Dufresne voted to have WASA attorney Mark Oldenburg and facility General Manager Stephen Hogan contact Senoia about supplying sewer services and negotiate an agreement that would be returned to the WASA board for consideration.
With approximately three weeks having transpired since the WASA meeting, The Citizen made an Open Records request to Senoia asking about the issue.
On that topic, Senoia City Attorney Drew Whalen on March 15 sent an email to City Manager Harold Simmons. In an email the same day to the Senoia City Council, Simmons said he had not spoken with anyone from Peachtree City about sewer.
The text of Whalen’s email to Simmons read:
“I sent you an article that appeared in The Citizen earlier this week, quoting some members of the Peachtree City Water and Sewerage Authority, indicating that WASA was still interested in providing sewer treatment to the City of Senoia. This morning I received a call from Peachtree City’s attorney, Ted Meeker (who does not represent WASA). He called to tell me the city has not changed its position on WASA providing service outside of the city, and did not at this time consent to such arrangement.
I told Ted I’d pass this along to you. Please forward this to the mayor and council.”
Asked about the email, Peachtree City Mayor Vanessa Fleisch subsequently responded by sending an email from Peachtree City attorney Ted Meeker.
Meeker’s March 24 email to Fleisch read:
“Drew and I did speak about this issue. I told Drew that I did not agree with (WASA attorney) Mark Oldenburg’s opinion that WASA could provide service to Senoia without the city’s consent. We discussed the contract language. Drew agreed with my opinion. We never discussed the city’s position on whether to extend service or not to extend service. The conversation focused solely on the legal issues.”
As for Senoia, that city is looking to expand its current sewer capacity of 500,000 gallons per day.
From WASA’s perspective, the authority, or at least some on the board, previously wanted to sell sewer capacity to Tyrone. That town recently voted to buy 400,000 gallons per day of capacity from Fulton County.
Tyrone last year had approached WASA about buying 350,000 gallons per day, up from the 250,000 currently purchased from Fairburn through Fulton County. The agreement with Fairburn was set to expire in 2019.
The call a year ago for an intergovernmental agreement between WASA, Peachtree City and Tyrone to be approved by all parties was not forthcoming.
Tyrone Mayor Eric Dial said the recent agreement with Fulton County gives Tyrone additional capacity and avoids $2 million in construction costs had Tyrone gone with WASA.
“We would have been limited to 350,000 gallons per day with Peachtree City and there were other items they wanted applied to the agreement. With Fulton, we get 400,000 gallons and save close to $2 million in construction costs,” Dial said recently. “I would have had to explain to our taxpayers why we spent that extra money unnecessarily.”
