Could expanding residential sewer options in Coweta County cut down on annexations and help preserve rural character?

It’s an idea Coweta County Commissioner Bob Blackburn proposed at a recent Coweta County Board of Commissioners meeting.

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Currently, Coweta ordinances don’t allow for sewer service in single-family, residential districts. Certain higher-density subdivisions can be built with decentralized sewer systems, and sewer is allowed for senior housing developments.

Public sewer would also have been allowed in developments zoned RI-B, but that zoning district was done away with a few years ago. The RI-B zoning district was proposed for areas just outside the city of Newnan.

Blackburn brought the idea up when the commissioners were discussing an annexation of property along U.S. 29 and Old Atlanta Highway. The proposal is for a 40-unit subdivision on the 30-acre property.

“There is no way we can control the growth in this county,” Blackburn said. “Coweta has so many attributes that make it attractive.”

He proposed that the county draw a circle around the city of Newnan and “allow sewer on any land that touches it."

“That is basically what they are after on these annexations – sewer,” Blackburn said.

County Administrator Michael Fouts said that, based on feedback from a meeting in October, the commissioners had discussed something similar. Fouts said he and members of the community development department would be meeting with a consultant to work on “what we’re calling the land guidance system.”

An update on that meeting will likely be presented at the next commission meeting, Fouts said.

The commissioners will meet March 26 at 6 p.m.

“I think it would help further preserve the rural identity of the county to use density as a tool against itself – to let density occur in the city,” Blackburn said.

“I’m not saying that this is the magic wand. I’m saying we’ve got to have a starting point,” Blackburn said.

The circle would need to be drawn by an independent, disinterested third party, he said.

Blackburn said he thinks that would stop annexations. With sewer already available, there wouldn’t be much incentive to being annexed.

“Why would you want to be double taxed? … If they stayed in the county, it’s just one county tax bill,” he said.

“It’s worth a try,” Blackburn said. “Maybe it isn’t the exact answer, but at least we’re doing something, not twiddling our thumbs and watching the county being devoured by everybody and his brother."

“Cities are dense, let them get denser,” he said. The plan could “encapsulate the city."

Blackburn and his family own a good bit of land in Coweta, and he was asked how he would respond to those who might say he was proposing this idea to help sell his own land.

“We aren’t developers,” Blackburn said. “I’d never do a home development, but I can’t tell somebody who bought our land what to do with it, what not to do with it,” he said. “I might not like what they do. At some point some people do need to sell their land."