Will Fayette County taxpayers

and water service customers be forced to pay part of the cost of rebuilding

the city of Atlanta's antiquated and dilapidated sewer system?

"Somebody's going to have

to rebuild that," County Commission Chairman Greg Dunn told his fellow

commissioners last week, and if the governor's new Metropolitan North

Georgia Regional Planning District board decides Fayette has to help,

"the big stick is not in our hands," he said.

Gov. Roy Barnes pushed creation

of the board through the state Legislature last year, saying the board

is needed to help plan regional solutions to the Atlanta region's water

supply and quality problems.

"I think he's lost his

damned mind," said Commissioner Herb Frady as the group discussed

the governor's plans.

As a relatively small player,

Fayette will have to go along with whatever regional projects the board

deems necessary, and may have to help bear the cost, he said.

Dunn's remarks came in the

aftermath of the first big battle on the new board, over how much each

county would be charged in dues as forced members of the organization.

Commissioners held their noses

and unanimously approved payment of $73,000 to the group to fund its administrative

costs and pay for consultants who will study the region's water problems

and propose solutions. "This is an unfunded mandate," said Commissioner

Linda Wells, but the county can't fight it, she said. "If we don't

play, we'll really get sent up the river," she said.

Dunn said "a state employee"

threatened to put counties' water withdrawal permits in jeopardy if they

don't cooperate, adding that when he checked the wording of the law creating

the board, he found that those threats were well-founded.

Originally, the board's staff

had proposed a formula for dues that had Fayette paying $106,655, but

Dunn and representatives of several other counties dug in their heels

and got voted as a block to get the amounts reduced, effectively reducing

the board's budget.

When he originally proposed

the board, Barnes offered $1 million from the state to help fund it, and

suggested the member counties pay another $1 million, but the staff submitted

a budget of $5 million, Dunn said.

The group found some grant

money to fund part of the budget, and then cut the budget by $800,000

to get the dues reduced a little more.

But all of that is a drop in

the bucket compared to the cost of funding the projects that the board's

consultants are likely to propose, said Dunn.

"When the plans are done,

they'll give birth to projects. Who and how we're going to pay for them

is anybody's guess," he added.

He also reiterated the frustration

of local officials, saying that Fayette has both conserved water and planned

ahead to avoid the problems that other counties are facing, and now the

county may be forced to pay for others' negligence.

"We have about the best-performing

water system in the state," he said. "We've done the things

that the governor is trying to make everybody else do."

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