City Extends Cutoff Date of County's Raw Water Supply

It appears Forsyth County will have a little more time to continue purchasing its raw water from the city of Cumming beyond Oct. 1.

During Tuesday night's city council meeting, Mayor H. Ford Gravitt and council unanimously approved to extend the cutoff date of the county's raw water supply for at least another 30 days past the deadline.

Mayor Gravitt told Cumming Patch approval to extend the deadline was due to some issues that surfaced during the August city council meeting and Tuesday night's meeting.

"There were concerns about health issues and safety issues," he said. "And because of that Commissioner [Brian] Tam had requested, and this is his request, that the city of Cumming give an extension of the raw water from Oct. 1 to Oct. 31 if no contract during that period of time is agreed on."

The mayor said there would be "trial runs" between the city water department and the county during the 30-day extension.

"We're going to service the county during that period of time – have a trial run with our treated water to make sure that there is no issue as far as the city furnishing the county all the water they need through our treatment plant rather than out of Lake Lanier," Gravitt said.

A 25-year contract that governed the price and amount of water the city sells to the county expired in May. Cumming Mayor Ford Gravitt said the city will continue to sell the county treated water at a rate of $2.50 per 1,000 gallons, but will not sell raw water at the old rate of 10 cents per 1,000 gallons without a signed contract.

A mediation is scheduled for Oct. 15 and 16 in regards to the special one-percent sales tax (LOST) and to discuss the water contract.

"We're going to piggyback our LOST mediation with the water to see if we can get some kind of contract with the county," said Gravitt.

Revenue from the LOST tax is designed to be divided between the city and county (see the PDF file to the right for more details on LOST).

"Although I would prefer to do the water negotiations first and the LOST second," said Commissioner Todd Levent. "Because we have no assurance that they'll [city] be reasonable with the negotiations to water if we're reasonable with LOST."

Bill Johnson contributed to this article.

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