Atlanta wants more time to finish sewer work, pay for it

By Eric Stirgus

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Atlanta officials want federal and state environmental officials to give them more time -- 15 years past the current deadline -- to complete the city's $4 billion effort to fix its aging sewers, improve water quality and stop pollution of the Chattahoochee River.

City Watershed Management Commissioner Rob Hunter wants the consent decree deadline extended from 2014 to 2029 to give Atlanta more time to pay for the project. Hunter said the problem is money -- the city is getting less of it to fund the work, and officials know taxpayers are less willing to shoulder the burden.

Officials project city revenue will fall $52.1 million below what they anticipated in the 12-month period ending June 30.

"This work is expensive, and no one knows that better than those of you who are paying it," Hunter told reporters Monday.

Atlanta already has some of the highest, if not the highest, water billing rates in the nation. Since 2003, the city has tripled water and sewer rates. The city also has a penny-per-dollar sales tax that voters passed in 2004 to help pay for the work.

However, since July 2006, water use has dropped by more than 20 percent, city officials said. Meanwhile, Atlanta will collect $20.5 million less than it did during the 12-month period that ended June 30, 2008, city officials said.

Hunter said the city would complete major projects, such as the South River tunnel, by 2014. Some sewer rehabilitation work would take longer to complete, the commissioner said.

Hunter said the city has issued $3.2 billion in bonds for the work. The water system's bond rating dropped last year, which makes it more expensive for Atlanta to borrow money for the improvements. Hunter said the extension is an effort to shift away from bond financing for the work.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash, who is overseeing the consent decree, would have to approve the extension, Hunter said. The commissioner said that could take about six months. Federal environmental officials were unavailable for comment Monday. State environmental officials declined to comment, a spokesman said.

In June 2008, the City Council passed four years of customer rate increases. The first-year increase was 27.5 percent, the next two years were each 12.5 percent, and the final-year increase will be 12 percent. Hunter said the city will push for smaller rate increases, about 2 percent, when the current schedule ends in 2012.

In 1999, the city agreed to a consent decree to fix its chronic sewer overflows and other sewage problems. The decree resulted from a 1994 lawsuit by the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper group, which was frustrated by the city's efforts to stop sewage spills into the river, which flowed downstream to waterways in South Georgia.

At one point in the 1990s, the city was paying $7 million a year in pollution fines.

In 2002, Atlanta, led by then-Mayor Shirley Franklin, pushed for a complete overhaul of the city's sewer system. The initial budget for all of the work was $3 billion.

Sally Bethea, the executive director of Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, said her group will support the extension if all of the major infrastructure upgrades are completed by 2014.

"We just want to make sure the job gets done and there's some relief to taxpayers," she said.