Tyrone and Fairburn officials

were to find out Friday whether their sewerage agreement will go down

the drain, along with home buyers' plans to move into a new Tyrone subdivision.

Lawyers made their final arguments

Tuesday in Fayette County's lawsuit asking that the agreement be nullified.

The county has asked Fulton

Judge Constance Russell to nullify the agreement, in which Tyrone will

buy sewer capacity from Fairburn and sell it to John Wieland Homes for

the Southhampton subdivision, saying that Fairburn would be providing

sewer service outside its borders, something its charter does not permit.

Wieland's lawyers joined the

two cities in defending the agreement.

"We would have to stop

building homes and marketing homes [if the sewer agreement is stopped],"

testified Edward Woodland, Wieland's vice president for the south Atlanta

region, during a December hearing in the case. Woodland was a witness

during a hearing on Fayette's motion for a temporary injunction, to halt

plans for the sewer deal pending a final hearing in the matter.

Russell denied that injunction,

but offered lawyers on both sides a chance to argue the case in a final

showdown Jan. 8, so the matter would be settled before residents start

moving in. They did so, and Russell promised to rule on the matter Friday

afternoon in her courtroom in Fulton County Superior Court, after press

time for The Sunday Citizen. If she did, the result can be seen at www.thecitizennews.com .

Thirty-seven homes are under

construction, with 16 of them under contract, Woodland said. Three homes

are scheduled to close in January, he added, the first one this Saturday.

In his arguments, assistant

Fayette County Attorney Dennis Davenport said another remedy exists the

company can build a small sewer plant just for the subdivision. Lawyers

for Tyrone and Wieland argued that the subdivision is in a sensitive area

environmentally, so a spray application sewer plant there is not a good

option.

Originally, Wieland had planned

to build a sewer plant for the subdivision, a plan that caused the Tyrone

Town Council to deny Wieland's request for rezoning. But a court overruled

that decision.

Tyrone officials then worked

out the agreement to purchase sewer capacity from Fairburn as a way to

avoid having Wieland build the plant.

The key question, as articulated

Fayette maintains that, because

Fairburn would be treating the sewage, the city would be providing the

sewer service. Since the city's charter doesn't allow it to provide sewer

service outside its borders, that would be illegal, Davenport argued.

Lawyers for the defendants

argue that, because Tyrone will own the collection system for the sewage

as well as the line connecting it to Fairburn's system, Tyrone will be

the provider of sewerage. And Tyrone's charter does allow it to provide

sewer service outside its borders.

In this instance, though, the

town has no plans to do so, the lawyers said. The 250,000 gallons a day

of capacity the town will buy from Fairburn is totally absorbed by the

subdivision and an attached commercial development being built by developer

Phillip Seay Sr., they pointed out.

County leaders are fighting

the agreement, they have said repeatedly, because they fear the existence

of a sewer line running through unincorporated Fayette County will encourage

future developers to tap into the sewerage and build high-density neighborhoods.

The county's long-range plans for that area call for minimum building

lots of one acre.

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