Fayette County

commissioners want more information before they decide what to do about

septage.

Finding a new

place to dispose of the solid and liquid that is pumped out of Fayette's

17,000 septic tanks has been the subject of numerous meetings of the staff

Environmental Committee and the county Water Committee.

After hearing

a report from the committees, commissioners directed the Water Committee

to study the possibility of coming to an agreement with a public sewer

facility that will accept the county's waste.

That solution

would probably require that the county build a pretreatment facility at

the sewer plant, costing about $1 million.

Septage is

more caustic and toxic than regular sewage, because it is kept in septic

systems for months and years without exposure to oxygen. Environmental

laws don't allow it to be disposed of in sewage treatment plants without

pretreatment.

Water Committee

officials will talk to sewer operators in Fayetteville, Peachtree City

and surrounding areas to explore the possibility of a joint agreement,

and County Attorney Bill McNally and consultant Jim Mallett will explore

the technical and legal ramifications of such an agreement.

Concerns about

the future disposal of septage came up after operators of Clayton County's

W.B. Casey sewer plant informed Fayette's Water Committee that the plant

may one day stop taking septage from outside Clayton County.

Currently,

private septic tank companies take Fayette's septage to the Clayton plant

and pay a fee to dump it there. But as the plant nears its capacity to

pretreat the effluent, Clayton customers will be given priority, officials

warn.

Water Committee

clerk Lisa Gillis recently contacted other surrounding counties, and none

of them take out-of-county septage at their treatment facilities, according

to county officials.

Water Committee

members also discussed paying another county, or possibly Peachtree City

or Fayetteville, to increase their capacity to handle septage.

The county

could take the approach of leaving the matter to the private septage companies

to figure out, said County Attorney 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 Water 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.