If a huge glycol spill comes

floating down the Flint River again, the Fayette County Water System will

have a warning that something is amiss.

County commissioners last week

unanimously agreed to spend about $25,000 for equipment to test raw water

entering the county's treatment plants on a daily basis.

"This would give us the

capability of doing daily testing on all of the intake facilities,"

said commission Chairman Greg Dunn during discussion of the purchase.

"If we'd had this piece of equipment, we may have known a little

earlier that there was a problem the city of Atlanta didn't tell us about"

in the recent deicing spill at Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport,

Dunn added.

Following the Jan. 3 spill

of deicing fluid at Hartsfield, it was 10 days before Fayette residents

started noticing a sweet smell and taste to their water and alerted the

water system and the state Environmental Protection Division.

Airport officials have promised

to communicate better with their neighbors in the future, but in the meantime

local officials have decided Fayette needs an early warning system.

The testing equipment will

establish a base level for total organic compounds in the water in Whitewater

Creek, Line Creek, Lake Horton and the Flint River at points where the

county draws water for treatment. Then, if there's a change in those levels,

daily testing will reveal that fact. "It won't tell us what it is,"

said Dunn. "It will just tell us that something is wrong with the

water."

Thus alerted, officials can

stop drawing water from that source until the problem is resolved.

Water system director Tony

Parrott said the equipment will be able to show changes in any organic

compounds in the water ... "gas, sewage, anything carbon-based,"

he said. "That's the majority of what you're dealing with" in

terms of contaminants, he said, and would have included the glycol that

is used in deicing fluid.

The only substances that would

not show up would be inorganic synthetic chemicals, he said.

In the wake of the Hartsfield

spill, Clayton County's water system has bought similar equipment, said

Parrott.

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