The Fayetteville City Council

will consider several proposals to increase the city's wastewater treatment

capacity at a special called meeting Thursday at 5:30 p.m.

City officials are proposing

refurbishing the city's mothballed sewage treatment plant, which was built

23 years ago, to double the city's current capacity from 2.5 million gallons

a day to 5 million gallons a day.

Currently, the city is using

roughly 2.2 million gallons a day of its 2.5 million gallon per day state-allotted

capacity, said City Manager Joe Morton.

"We don't have any wiggle

room," Morton said, adding that an expansion would allow the city

to better maintain its current plant and better handle large rain events

which can dramatically increase the amount of water that needs to be treated.

It will cost an estimated $4.41

million to refurbish the old sewer plant so it can be reactivated at its

old capacity of 1.25 million gallons a day, Morton said. But for an extra

$1.35 million, the capacity of that plant can be doubled to 2.5 million

gallons a day, which would be more economical, Morton added.

The extra 1.25 million gallons

a day works out to a cost of just over a dollar per gallon, while it can

cost up to $4.92 per gallon to build a new sewage treatment plant from

scratch, Morton said.

The expansion will likely be

paid for with revenue bonds, which do not require a referendum for approval

since they are backed by revenues and assets of the city's water and sewer

system, Morton said.

The city has used revenue bonds

for almost all of its capital improvements to the sewer system, Morton

added.

The city has always planned

to increase its sewer capacity by refurbishing the older sewage treatment

plant, Morton noted.

When the new wastewater treatment

plant opened in 1991, the city projected it would need 3.75 million gallons

a day when it reached build-out status with an estimated population of

23,000 in 2013 or 2014. But city officials are looking now at needing

between 3.65 and 4 million gallons a day at build-out, Morton said.

"I don't see us using

much more than 4 million gallons a day," Morton said.

That figure was reached by

taking into account property currently in the city and not property that

might be annexed in the future, Morton added.

"We did not take into

account any areas outside the city," Morton said. "We basically

covered the needs of our current boundaries."

The extra capacity will help

hasn't been done since the plant opened in 1991, Morton added.

The extra capacity will also

help during periods of heavy rain when the system receives a lot of extra

water to treat before releasing it into Whitewater Creek, Morton added.

He also noted that the expansion will help the city meet Georgia's sewer

treatment regulations as they get more stringent in the future.

Morton said a possible expansion

of the sewer plant has been considered by the council for the past few

years during its annual retreat.

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