Repeated

sewage spills into Lake Peachtree, a major source

of drinking water for Fayette County, are

becoming a big problem, county commissioners say.

Commissioners

Saturday voted to ask county attorneys to look

for legal remedies.

The

county has a drinking water intake facility on

Lake Peachtree, but Peachtree City's Water and

Sewerage Authority owns that city's sewer system,

and the county has no control over it.

spill of 1,500 gallons of raw sewage Jan. 30 was

the second in recent months, and got

commissioners' attention. A pump station on the

lake stopped due to a power outage, and WASA's

emergency plan operated properly, alerting

workers who installed a generator to keep the

sewage pumping.

But

a worker installed the wrong generator, delaying

restart of the pump and adding to the spill.

"I

think we have a serious problem," said

Commissioner Greg Dunn. "We're being

victimized by it because that is a major drinking

water source for us.

"This

entire county depends on those two lakes

[Peachtree and Kedron] and we can't control

it," he added during the commission's annual

planning retreat Saturday.

The

only way to be 100 percent sure of preventing

future spills would be to install a device that

would cause sewage to back up into homes rather

than spill into the lake, said Commissioner Glen

Gosa, chairman of the county Water Committee. He

didn't recommend that measure, Gosa said.

WASA

general manager Larry Turner admitted that the

Jan. 30 spill was due to human error, but said

the sewer system has good emergency measures in

place, which limited the spill to only 1,500

gallons.

"We

do recognize the critical nature of that station,

and we are going to improve it," he said.

WASA's capital improvement plan for 2000 includes

replacing the pump station and installing a

permanent generator.

Commissioners

directed county attorneys to research legal means

what happens to the lake.

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