Two years ago Fulton County closed a privately owned wastewater treatment plant in Johns Creek, saving $49 million dollars and allowing the county to reduce water rates.
Now the plant’s owners want the county to spend millions of dollars to reopen it even though Fulton administrators say they don’t need the plant, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned. And some elected officials are considering it.
Ron Green, CEO of Cauley Creek Water Reclamation, has offered to sell the facility to Fulton County for $15 million, according to a proposal obtained by the newspaper. Alternatively, Green has offered to restart the plant and contract with the county to treat wastewater.
In a statement to the AJC, Green said the options are “significantly more favorable” to the county than the old agreement terminated two years ago.
“We believe that the Cauley Creek facility continues to represent a viable opportunity to help support the county’s future growth and irrigation water needs,” Green said.
Supporters say reopening the plant will help Fulton comply with provisions of a regional water conservation plan it violated when it closed the private treatment plant two years ago. They also say the plant, which produced irrigation water, is needed to serve several golf clubs – including the Country Club of the South and the Atlanta Athletic Club – that attract major tournaments and have a big economic impact.
“I never thought it made any sense to stop operations there. My opinion has not changed,” said Commissioner Liz Hausmann, whose district includes the plant. “I think we’ve been fortunate since we closed it that we’ve had sufficient rainfall. But that isn’t always going to be the case.”
In 2012 County Commissioners voted to end their contract with Cauley Creek after the finance and water departments said it wasn't needed. The move saved the county about $7 million a year and allowed it to cut sewer and water rates by 4 percent.
It’s unclear how reopening the plant would affect Fulton’s 111,600 water and sewer customers. But some former county commissioners say it makes no sense to revisit the issue.
“From my perspective, the Board [of Commissioners] spoke loudly and clearly in favor of the ratepayers,” said former Commissioner Robb Pitts, who left office in December. “I’m astounded that there would be an effort to bring that up again.”
Green's proposal is the latest twist in the county's long history with Cauley Creek, which owes its existence to the explosive growth in north Fulton in recent decades.
The county failed to keep up with that growth and ran out of sewage capacity in the Johns Creek area. In 2000 state regulators imposed a moratorium on new sewer permits until Fulton built more treatment capacity.
The county spent $137 million on the Johns Creek Environmental Campus, a public wastewater treatment plant that opened in 2010. But to help accommodate growth in the meantime, Fulton helped finance the privately owned Cauley Creek plant, which opened in 2002.
Cauley Creek produced non-drinkable “reuse” water for irrigation, serving about two dozen customers, including several golf courses and churches. In addition to providing needed wastewater capacity, it helped the state meet conservation goals for reusing water.
But by 2012 Fulton administrators said the county no longer needed Cauley Creek. They were paying the owners more than $7 million a year to treat water while most of the capacity at the new Johns Creek plant went unused.
A majority of county commissioners was convinced by the staff’s analysis. In September 2012 they voted 5-2 to terminate the contract, with Hausmann and Chairman John Eaves dissenting.
To make the golf courses and other customers whole, Fulton agreed to sell them drinkable water for irrigation, charging them the same rate they’d paid Cauley Creek for non-drinkable water. Ratepayers got the 4 percent rate reduction in 2013, saving an average of $25 a year, though some commercial customers saved thousands of dollars.
Interim County Administrator Patrick O’Connor said this week Fulton is on track to save $49 million through 2021, when the Cauley Creek contract was set to expire.
But the state Environmental Protection Division took a dim view of the discount rates Fulton charged Cauley Creek’s former customers for drinkable water. In an audit released in 2013, the agency found those rates violate conservation provisions of a regional water plan.
EPD says the discount rates discourage conservation of precious Chattahoochee River water. The county says its contracts with those customers will expire by 2023, when it will be in compliance. Until Fulton complies with the regional water plan, it can't expand its own treatment plants.
In the meantime, Cauley Creek’s owners are campaigning to get Fulton to reopen the plant, billing it as a way to address the EPD’s concerns.
Last August Green e-mailed a proposal to Hausmann and former County Manager Dwight Ferrell. He offered to sell the plant and 40 surrounding acres to the county for $15 million, calling it “a deeply discounted price.”
Alternatively, Green offered to renegotiate the old contract, keeping the plant in private hands but committing the county to using it for “a set term long enough to meet requirements of both parties.”
Either option likely would involve spending millions of dollars for a plant Fulton officials have said they don’t need.
“[Green] has a huge financial stake in this thing,” Pitts said. “Five commissioners sided with the taxpayers.”
But the commission now has several newly members. Two of them, Bob Ellis and Lee Morris, said they may take a fresh look at the issue. Morris said he’s met with Green to discuss the issue.
“I have not talked to county folks about it, so I’m not familiar with the other side of the story,” Morris said. “I’ve learned never to commit to a position until you’ve heard from both sides.”
O’Connor, the interim county manager, was finance director when commissioners voted to close the plant. At the time he argued passionately for closing it. This week he declined to comment on the proposal.
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