County Agrees To Allocate Sewer Capacity To Watkinsville

Oconee County commissioners on Tuesday night tentatively approved an agreement that will allocate to the city of Watkinsville 100,000 gallons per day of sewage treatment capacity from the county’s Calls Creek Water Reclamation Facility and provide another 100,000 gallons per day when that plant is expanded.

Watkinsville can use that allocated sewage treatment capacity as it sees fit, including for residential use at the proposed multi-use Wire Park development on Barnett Shoals Road.

Watkinsville Council has approved a sewer policy that states that the city will use the sewer capacity from the county to serve residential customers in the city’s core as a first priority, but it allows for other uses as well.

At present, the amount of sewer capacity that Oconee County has set aside for residential use outside Watkinsville is exhausted, meaning that the only residential developments in the county eligible for sewer services in the near future will be those within the city limits of Watkinsville.

In other action on Tuesday, the Board of Commissioners discussed a recently completed assessment of historical structures, all but one of them on county property, and a plan to begin spending Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax revenue for repairs to those structures.

The Board also agreed to pay $140,066 in contract modifications for work on the Mars Hill Road/Rocky Branch Road/Virgil Langford Road intersection and received an update on plans for construction of the Bishop Farms Parkway extension.

For more on this story, with a video of the Board of Commissioners meeting, please go to Oconee County Observations.