Fayette County's Water Committee

has alerted county commissioners to a coming quandary what to do with

about 54,000 gallons a month of nasty, smelly septage.

According to Jim Mallett, Fayette

County's consultant and a member of the Water Committee, "This stuff

is really nasty. It's anaerobic; in other words no oxygen gets into it,

and it has a bad odor."

Septage is the stuff that comes

out of your septic tank, and disposing of it is no simple matter.

The committee has passed along

an issue paper on septage that was developed by the county's Environmental

Committee.

Mallett put a price tag of

about $1 million on one possible solution, building a treatment plant

somewhere in Fayette County to handle the effluent.

Such a plant would have to

be enclosed to cut down on the odor, he said, and before the liquid septage

could be chemically treated, it would have to be biologically treated

he said.

Committee members are considering

such options because Clayton County's W. B. Casey sewer plant, which currently

takes in Fayette's septage for a fee, has put the county on notice that

it will some day have to stop taking out-of-county septage.

Private companies that pump

out septic tanks take the effluent to the Casey plant.

"They are getting concerned

about the amount that is coming in," said water system director Tony

Parrott, adding that he was told "they didn't intend to upgrade their

water reclamation facility to accommodate regional growth in Fayette County

at the expense of their customers or their citizens."

Water Committee clerk Lisa

Gillis contacted other surrounding counties, and none of them take out-of-county

septage at their treatment facilities, according to committee member Chris

Venice.

Committee member Dr. George

Patton suggested that one solution might be to pay Clayton County to upgrade

its system to handle Fayette's future volume.

"I don't know of anything

that would rule that out," said committee Chairman Glen Gosa.

Vice Chairman Chuck Watkins

suggested another possibility, paying Fayetteville or Peachtree City to

treat county septage.

"I wonder if their plants

are large enough," said Patton.

The county could take the approach

of leaving the matter to the private septage companies to figure out,

said County Attorney Bill McNally, but he added, "There may be no

place for the folks hauling it out of here to put it."

In its issue paper, the committee

points out that illegal dumping of septage has happened in the past and

could happen again if there's no legal dumping place available.

The committee voted unanimously

to add Mallett's information on building a treatment plant to the issue

paper and discuss it again at its Sept. 27 meeting.

TheEnvironmental Committee's

recommendation is that the county provide a pretreatment facility and

pursue a joint venture with some other public sewer system for disposal

of the pretreated effluent.

Building the pretreatment facility

could be paid for by charging a fee of $1 a month to homeowners.

The county also expects that

new federal regulations will require building a treatment facility for

storm water, and homeowners also may be charged a "utility"

fee to pay for that, the committee's position paper says.

Ga. drought problems persist,

but Fayette's still fine

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Recent rains have not washed

away the drought conditions that plague north Georgia water systems, said

Tony Parrott, Fayette's water system director.

But Fayette continues to be

in better shape than its neighbors, he added.

"Twenty-six counties have

30 days or less [supply of raw water in their reservoirs]," Parrott

told the county Water Committee during a recent meeting. "The Newnan

reservoir has dropped 40 percent, and with a 13-million-gallon [per day]

capacity, they're hitting 14 million some days.

"Coweta County is hoping

to purchase water from us next year or they're going to be in trouble,"

he added.

Citizen, "If it didn't rain this winter, we would be all right until

summer."

Fayette's reservoirs were full

this spring, and full reservoirs give the county a one-year supply of

raw water, he said. "Next spring if they're full, we've got another

year," he said.

The county can produce about

14 million gallons a day of treated water currently, and sold an average

of almost 11 mgd in August, according to the system's monthly production

report. Demand reached as high as just under 14 million gallons on the

peak day of Aug. 14, the report states.

The biggest problem Fayette

has faced during the drought thus far, Parrott said, is actually caused

between 10 p.m. and 10 a.m.

Residents apparently turn their

sprinklers on around 6 a.m. and leave for work, then phone home just at

10 a.m. to instruct spouses or children to turn them off, he said. On

one particular day, the water tank on Ga. Highway 92 dropped down to a

three-foot level just before 10 a.m., then immediately began to fill back

up.

Fayette would prefer to continue

the odd-even water restrictions with no restriction as to time of day,

he said, but must follow the state edict.

Meanwhile, most local residents

are complying with the restrictions, and that helps keep local supplies

in good shape, he told the Water Committee.

"We've been lucky,"

he said. "There have been very few people we've had to talk to."

No fines have been issued, he said, and the most drastic action the water

system has taken has been to turn off service to a few sprinkler systems.

Residents with automatic sprinklers

can help by shutting them off on days that it rains, he added.

Parrott said it's hoped that

winter rains will refill the county's reservoirs by next spring and supplies

of raw water will remain strong.

As for treated water, the county's

new water treatment plant on Antioch Road south of Fayetteville is expected

to go on-line next May, just in time for the usual summer crunch. It will

add six million gallons a day to the county's ability to provide treated

water.

And, thinking ahead, the water

system is installing pumps and lines large enough to bring nine mgd of

raw water from the Horton Creek Reservoir to the plant in the future.

The plant is designed for easy expansion to that capacity.