Rockdale County

County running out of room to hold septic waste

ROCKDALE COUNTY, Ga. — Rockdale County is running out of space! Not with land, but with water treatment. The county makes money by taking in septic waste from other counties, but now they’re almost at capacity and a fix may be a long way away.

News Drone 2 flew over Rockdale County’s business district to see the thriving stretch from above. Melvin Easley lives on the south side of the county and says it’s not like that everywhere.

“The sewer does not make it to that part of the county so as far as growth, restaurants, businesses that type of thing, we're limited," he said.

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Rockdale County is becoming extremely limited when it comes to water treatment space. As it stands, the county takes in septic waste from neighboring counties for a charge. Rockdale County’s Director of Water Resources, Dwight Wicks said, “I’ve got a proposal to restrict the septic to only Rockdale County citizens and those haulers that are only serving Rockdale County citizens.” %

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That move alone could free up some much needed water treatment space for development. However, right now, there’s a moratorium on residential development until the county figures out how to treat more waste water.

“For instance, some developments are coming in and offering to build their own package plants to process their own waste,” said State Senator of District 43 JaNice Van Ness.  It’s an idea, but not one Wicks is fond of, should the developer leave. “It throws the burden of their system on us and a lot of times the facilities are not built according to our standards,” said Wicks.

Rockdale County has plans to build a new water treatment plant to ease two of the county’s five plants, but it won’t be up and running for years.

“We’re not totally out of capacity, but we are getting extremely close to being out of capacity,” said Wicks.