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Clough passes sewer plan to Atlanta mayor

David Terraso
Institute Communications and Public Affairs

First she took on the city’s potholes; now Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin is vowing to clean up the city’s sewers and streams, with help from President Wayne Clough. Franklin unveiled her new $3 billion Clean Water Atlanta program last week, a five-point plan designed to improve the quality of the Chattahoochee River and its tributaries by revamping the city’s aging sewer system. The new plan is the result of months of study by city officials and the Mayor’s Clean Water Advisory Panel, chaired by Clough.

“Most of Clean Water Atlanta is based on the Clough panel’s recommendations,” said Franklin.

The city’s plan is a long time coming. In 1998, Atlanta settled a lawsuit filed by the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and property owners downstream of the city. The suit charged that the 19 square miles of sewers running under the city’s central core violate federal and state water quality standards by dumping polluted water into area streams. The settlement gives the city until 2007 to meet the standards.

The nine-member panel met four times in publicly held meetings from June to September to study the city’s proposed plan for meeting the terms of the settlement. Each of the eight panel members selected by Clough are nationally known experts in civil engineering, wastewater management or public health. Many of them, including Clough, have been involved with sewer projects for other large U.S. cities.

“The short time period to get clean water in Atlanta was a challenge,” said Clough. “But in developing our recommendations to the mayor, we focused on three key issues: water quality, schedule and quality of life for residents.”

In the end, the panel advised the mayor to tweak her previous plan for separating 27 percent of the city’s combined sewer system by changing the sewer lines marked for separation. The adjustments will allow the city to get rid of two of its six plants that filter pollution from the combined sanitary and stormwater sewers, and one regulator plant while still immensely improving the quality of the water that is re-fed into the city’s streams.

“This plan achieves the highest water quality at the lowest cost in the shortest amount of time,” said Franklin.

Clough said the plan will also improve water quality by building tunnels that would hold the excess untreated sewage that build up in periods of heavy rain. As the rain subsides and the strain on the combined sewer system is lessened, the sewage could be pumped out of the tunnels and into treatment plants before being discharged into rivers and streams. Currently, rain overwhelms the system about 60 times a year on the west side of the city and 20 times on the east side.

Implementing the panel’s recommendations will also save the city $155 million dollars, potentially reducing the amount residents will have to pay in the form of higher water bills.

But perhaps most importantly to the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, the panel’s recommendations should allow the city to meet the terms of the settlement by 2007, potentially saving Atlanta the cost and embarrassment of punitive action by federal and state environmental authorities.

In addition, Clough said, his panel’s recommendations will result in less construction disruption to residents and businesses.

“I’m thrilled with the way things are going,” said Sally Bethea, executive director of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, the organization that brought the lawsuit against the city.

Nevertheless, the city’s plan is not without its critics. Fed up with sewage backups into their homes and streets, many residents were hoping the city would decide to separate all of the combined sewers at once.

Approved by the Office of External Affairs on 09/24/97
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Last Modified: October 21, 2002
Contact: editor@icpa.gatech.edu