Tyrone and

Fairburn officials will 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

is asking 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 at 4:40 p.m. in her courtroom in Fulton County Superior Court.

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 by Judge Russell during previous hearings, is: "Who

owns this sewer?"

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

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.