Under discussion for more than

two decades, Lake McIntosh is moving closer to becoming a reality.

The final linchpin in Fayette's

long-term plans to provide drinking water to local residents, the 650-acre

lake on Line Creek in southwestern Peachtree City is expected to boost

water production by 8 million gallons a day.

Engineers for the project last

week presented the county Water Committee a hydraulic report on the dam

that will create the lake, and the committee discussed three construction

options with estimated price tags ranging from $2.75 million to $8.17

million.

Plans are to discuss those

options with the city of Peachtree City before deciding which option to

take. The city's plans to extend TDK Boulevard will be affected because,

under the two least expensive plans, the road will run across the spillway

for the dam, which might flood the road during extremely heavy rains.

Under the most expensive option,

the spillway would be constructed directly on top of the dam, and the

road would cross Line Creek farther south, avoiding the spillway altogether.

State safe dam regulations

require that, under that option, the spillway be built high enough to

hold back the most severe flooding predictable, and the extra expense

would be mostly due to the requirement for more concrete, said engineer

Jim Mallett.

Committee member George Patton

suggested the city might want to participate in the cost in order to get

the county to fund the more expensive option. "We ought to talk to

them about participating with us because it benefits them and the county

both," he said.

Engineers will get input from

Peachtree City and the Water Committee will continue its discussion later.

Meanwhile, application for

a federal permit for the dam will be ready "soon," Mallett predicted.

Once the application is submitted, the process takes about a year, he

said, including several public hearings.

Final cost of the project will

be affected by the permit process, through which the U.S. Army Corps of

Engineers determines how many acres of wetlands the county will have to

create or restore in order to replace the wetlands lost by creating Lake

McIntosh.

Plans were well underway to

build the lake in the early 1980s, but were set aside in the face of opposition

from nearby land owners, mostly in Coweta County. That opposition has

since evaporated.

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