Hall approaches DeKalb about water sale

GAINESVILLE - Hall County officials made a pitch to sell water to DeKalb County Tuesday.

Hall County Commissioner Ashley Bell says they presented a plan to the DeKalb County Commission to have DeKalb buy water from the still-to-be-developed Glade Farm Reservoir.

Forsyth County has already agreed to such an arrangement.

Bell said metro Atlanta is a natural if Hall County has excess water to sell once the new reservoir is operational.

"And, there's no more bigger consumer in the water business than the City of Atlanta and DeKalb County."

Bell said DeKalb commissioners reacted favorably to the proposal and another meeting is scheduled in a couple of weeks.

"We're going to be having another meeting with their public utility department in two weeks and I think that from that meeting you'll see a favorable outcome with DeKalb."

Bell emphasized that Gainesville and Hall County's water needs will be taken care of first when it comes to selling water from the Glade Farm Reservoir and that only excess water will be sold to Forsyth, DeKalb and any other local governments that agree to buy water from Hall County.

Bell called such deals a "win-win" situation for everybody.

"Hall County, if you build-out Glades reservoir could be a purveyor of raw water, which means that you could sell it to people downstream and that could help pay for the cost of building Glades reservoir and that's revenue that would come back into Hall County."