Quick Poll

With Friday's announcement of her show coming to an end in 2011, has the Oprah Winfrey Show been a television 'must see' for you in the past 25 years?

Blogs

Angela McRae

Tea with friends

Deberah Williams

Everyday Finesse

Lorrie Lynch

Who's News

Published Friday, October 02, 2009 in Business

Coweta's water abundant

By Jeff Bishop

The Times-Herald

While the rest of Georgia suffered through a water shortage over the past several years, Newnan and Coweta County had the opposite problem.

The county really has more water than it knows what to do with, said Ellis Cadenhead, general manager of the Coweta County Water Authority, at the Thursday morning meeting of the Coweta County Development Authority.

He explained that the Coweta County Water Authority serves more than 24,000 customers, but only 144 of those are industrial customers. In fact, there are only 951 total commercial customers, he said.

"That's a lot less than we expected to have," he said, and far less than what's ideal.

Residential water demand, meanwhile, has slowed way down, he said, dropping from a high of about 1,000 additional residential customers per year several years ago to an increase of less than 600 customers in the past two years.

"The growth has seen a huge decline, insofar as it impacts our water system," said Cadenhead.

It's to the point now where the the county's B.T. Brown Reservoir is hardly even tapped, he said.

"It's now used as a peaking plant," he said, thanks to a contract with the city of Griffin that supplies the Coweta County with much of its water needs.

Now the county's in a situation where "we have 6 million gallons a day in capacity that's just sitting there with no use," said Cadenhead.

So attracting industries that require high water use has become a high priority, he said.

"We need large industries that have to use a lot of water," said Cadenhead. "That would be a huge benefit to us."

The county also has excess sewage treatment capacity, he said. These excess capacities should be marketed to prospective industries, he said.

"That could be a huge benefit," said Cadenhead.

He said water and sewer infrastructure has been put into place on Hwy. 154 and on Lower Fayetteville Road where the new Piedmont Newnan Hospital is going to be located, and "it's just sitting there," waiting to be used.

"This is a big investment that needs to be put to use," he said.

Coweta's water capacity was also aided by an effort over the past several years to eliminate faulty polybutylene piping. A 2.5 million gallon per day water loss has been reduced to a loss of only 839,000 gallons per day, he said.

"Those polybutylene pipes were a tremendous drain on the system," he said.

The city has filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers of the pipes but the suit is "sitting in a judge's chambers, waiting to see if we can proceed," he said.

Board members asked if some of the county's excess capacity can be sold to water-hungry Atlanta.

"Absolutely," said Cadenhead.

"If they get thirsty enough," quipped board member Jim McGuffey.

Chairman David Brown said that the state did not want communities with excess water capacity to use that as a bargaining chip to lure development during the drought and water crisis. While it's still not something that "we should put on the marquee," McGuffey said, it certainly should not be ignored when it comes to marketing.

"The state did not want us to tap that, especially during the drought," said Cadenhead..

Brown said that he never understood why the county had to follow state water use restrictions when there was never a water capacity problem locally.

"If we have two years of storage, shouldn't we be exempt from those mandates?" Brown said.

"We tried several different ways to do that," said Cadenhead. "But we were not successful. The state would not even respond to us."

Brown praised the county and city leaders for "thinking ahead" to put Coweta County in such a good position.

"At least we know we're not going to run out of water," said Brown..

Board member Steve Stripling asked Cadenhead if it would be the proper course for the development authority to begin marketing itself as an attractive place for high water use industry, such as food manufacturers. Cadenhead said that the capacity is certainly available, if such an approach were to be undertaken.

The current big users of the county water system are the cities of Grantville and Hogansville and the Yamaha golf cart and water-sport vehicle plant, and there's capacity for plenty more, he said.

"Wouldn't bio-tech companies qualify?" asked board member Rob Brass. Cadenhead said that he thought so.

McGuffey said it makes sense to go after industrial prospects that would be high-volume consumers of water, "because we won't see any dramatic increase in residential water consumption for a while."

Comment On This Story

Times-Herald.com does not necessarily agree with the comments posted below. Responsibility of comments rests solely with the writer. Comments posted in ALL CAPS will be deleted.

Submission of a comment does not guarantee publication. Comments will be posted by a moderator after being scanned for abusive language, relevance, etc. See our Comments FAQ for more details.