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Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009

MWA gets $5 million loan for sewers

The Georgia Environmental Facilities Authority announced $6.7 million in loans for water and sewer projects Tuesday, most of which is a $5.1 million loan to the Macon Water Authority.

Putnam County and Eatonton also received a smaller grant to upgrade water meters.

The Macon Water Authority will use its loan to install a new sewer line between its Lennox and Corbin lift stations, relieving pressure on an existing line that has had many sewage spills in the last few years, authority director Tony Rojas said.

Authority officials have said that line, which serves the portion of north Bibb County that has rapidly developed during the past five years, doesn’t have the capacity to handle all the sewage it receives, particularly when rain water infiltrates the line.

Paired with a project under way to find the leaks in the sewer lines that drain to the same area, the new sewer line should reduce or eliminate repeated spills into Sabbath Creek and the Ocmulgee River, Rojas said. It also will allow further development in north Bibb, he said.

The current “find and fix” project to reduce leaks in the same drainage basin also was funded with the help of a $1.2 million loan from GEFA, paired with $800,000 in federal stimulus funds.

Elsewhere in Middle Georgia, the Eatonton-Putnam County Water and Sewer Authority will receive a $321,550 in a combination of state loan funds and money from the federal stimulus bill, GEFA announced Tuesday. The money will upgrade commercial and residential water meters to increase meter reading accuracy, according to a GEFA news release. Consistent with GEFA’s stimulus bill financing terms for green projects, 60 percent (up to a maximum of $192,930) of the principal will be forgiven.

Information from The Telegraph’s archives was used in this report. To reach writer S. Heather Duncan, call 744-4225.