The spectre

of drivers being greeted by an empty Lake Peachtree as they enter Peachtree

City on Ga. Highway 54 is prompting county water officials to move cautiously

on their periodic dredging project.

"With

us being in a drought situation like we've been in ... I don't think anybody

would want a clean lake down there with no water," said County Attorney

Bill McNally during last week's meeting of the Water Committee.

In a long-standing

agreement with Peachtree City, the county Water System is responsible

for periodically dredging the lake. The agreement calls for checking the

lake every eight years to see if it needs dredging.

The lake was

dredged in 1986 and checked in 1994. City officials recently reminded

the Water Committee that the next review is due in 2002.

"They

were interested in us going ahead and doing the review," said system

director Tony Parrott, but if the review is done and it shows a need to

dredge, then the project must be accomplished within six months.

If drought

conditions don't improve, it could take a long time for the lake to fill

with water again once it's emptied for the dredging, McNally pointed out.

"I suspect

there will be some required dredging this time," said Parrott.

The group took

no vote on the matter. Consensus was to hold off for awhile.

In another

matter concerning Lake Peachtree, Parrott reported that the state Department

of Natural Resources is in the process of rewriting its inventory of dams

and wanted to know whether the Lake Peachtree dam should be reclassified.

The dam is

currently a category two, which means that there is no threat of loss

of life should it break. "They're just making sure that nothing's

been built downstream that would make it a category one," said Parrott.

That's unlikely,

he said, but it will take about a month for DNR to make that determination.

In other business,

the committee voted to recommend approval of the low bid of $694,054 from

Kenny Shockley Plumbing for water line extensions, and voted to recommend

offering the county's old water meters for bid.

About 20,000

meters county-wide are being replaced with new ones that can be read using

radio waves. The company putting in the new meters has offered $3 apiece

for them, but committee members said they want to see if they can get

a better offer.

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