DeKalb’s Broken Sewer Pipes

Development projects delayed

AJC article “Sewer problems threaten DeKalb growth” 8/26/16 states that letters went out from DeKalb County to the cities of Brookhaven, Decatur, Doraville and Dunwoody.   

DeKalb County failed to get ahead of its aging sewer lines and has not made sanitary sewer line replacement the priority it needed to be over the past 4 decades.  Metro Atlanta continues to concentrate on new construction to allow expansion despite the fundamentals that suggest more economic decline.  We are like the Chinese, building entire cities of office buildings and apartments in hopes of finding renters to pay high rents and we are forfeiting $Millions in tax holidays to get it.  Cities and CIDs have continued to push redevelopment and now may need to slow down.

The article mentions things businesses can do to reduce their sewer flow-rate, but the real culprit isn’t the property owners.  The problem is that the sewer lines under the roads and through the easements owned by the county have too many breaks and leaks and lacks the capacity to accept new users.  The sewer replacement program is moving ahead, but is in need of new funding and has resulted in putting cities who have development projects “in the que” waiting for permission to hook up to the sewer. DeKalb could raise property taxes to pay for sewer line replacement if they didn’t want to charge water customers for all of it.  Either way, we pay.

DeKalb was clever enough to transfer its Water & Sewer Department out of its Public Works Department and into the DeKalb County Utility Customer Operations (dekalbwatershed.com) so that customers would pay for this sewer replacement.  This would quadruple our water bills and they would rather not suffer the flack they would get from the customers. 

They should have kept the sewer line in the $1.2 Billion annual county budget and pared back on lower priority subsidies. 

http://dekalbcountyga.gov/finance/pdf/2016BudgetDoc.pdf

So, now the music has stopped and the county doesn’t have a chair to land on. 

Many customers already know it can cost over $4000 to run 70 feet of new 4” poly sewer line from the house to the street.  But when DeKalb replaces the main sewer lines from the street in front of your yard to the treatment plants it costs $Billions.  Fines for failure to fix these leaks can cost $Billions.  DeKalb now has over 300 leaks and the entire sewer pipe system needs to be replaced to fix this 100 year old pipe problem.  DeKalb has placed monitors in the sewer pipe system to measure flow rate and they can tell commercial property owners if they are at capacity.  They can also detect sewer breaks and clean out clogged sewer pipes. 

The crumbling 16” sewer pipe now in the ground needs to be replaced with 24” pipe, because the existing pipe is “at capacity”.   DeKalb could be the next sewer system failure financial disaster poster child and replace Jefferson County Alabama.  Customers will want to go back to septic tanks on 1 acre lots.  This is a good time for Atlanta Metro to shrink and send new development to the exurbs like Cherokee County. Our only financially sustainable option is “urban sprawl”.

See article.

DeKalb spends on water and sewer upgrades, 6/27/16 AJC

The DeKalb Commission is considering a $1.38 billion midyear 2016 budget. The budget includes $48 million for water and sewer improvements

The biggest spending increase in DeKalb proposed government budget is $48 million for water and sewer construction.

Overall, Interim DeKalb CEO Lee May’s recommended $1.38 billion midyear 2016 budget is $57.6 million, or 4.4 percent, larger than the county’s spending plan that was approved in February.

The water and sewer improvements are part of the county’s long-term project to reduce sewage spills and increase capacity. The capital improvements are costing utility customers $1.35 billion.

DeKalb Budget Director Jay Vinicki said during a Monday budget meeting that the county’s budget increase is only $9 million, or 0.7 percent, after adjusting for the water and sewer costs.

That money would primarily go toward 4 pay raises for DeKalb employees retroactive to May.

The midyear budget would spend $6.3 million to finish giving raises to the county’s 6,000 employees after $5.1 million was allocated in the February budget. The raises would cost $17.1 million annually.

The county government has more money to spend because of rising tax collections as property values continue to rise.

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-govt-politics/dekalb-spends-on-water-and-sewer-upgrades/nrnwh/

If you look at the DeKalb County budget, it is full of things that are not as necessary as sewer lines.  DeKalb needs to reduce expenses for nonessentials and transfer that money to the sewer pipe project. 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader