Plans for a large sewer collection project in northeast Atlanta have local businesses worried.
The Liddell Drive project near Cheshire Bridge Road includes a container that would handle 10 million gallons of sewage overflow.
This is the third site proposed by the city. Neighborhood outcry stopped previous plans. Now businesses in the area fear the sewer project will make the area an industrial dumping ground.
Akm Haque, who owns a business in the area, says a heavy downpour brings a lot of sewage and a bad smell.
"I go outside, and I feel the smell. I feel it," said Haque.
Haque is interested in the plans to collect that runoff and send it to the receptacle that would be close to his business.
"This project will actually help reduce and potentially eliminate many of those sanitary sewer overflows that occur throughout the watershed up and down Peachtree Creek," said Jo Ann Macrina, the Department of Watershed Management commissioner.
But others who make their living there aren't so receptive. Owners of a longtime restaurant on Cheshire Bridge told FOX 5 that they're worried about this project. That it will drive down property values and drive customers away.
"I hope that it won't damage the businesses that are around Cheshire Bridge Road. It seems to me that Cheshire Bridge Road is being picked on," said resident Winnie Currie.
Neighbors met with watershed officials on Monday to ask questions about the project. They said they are nervous about a even worse odor.
"I tried to ask for a place that was built exactly like this that I could go to and just see how it works, but they couldn't give me one," said Currie.
The city is under federal mandate to improve its sewer system and officials say the Liddell Drive location is the best fit.
"We're using the latest technology for odor control and the bottom line: you will not be able to see this project in most of the vantage points, nor smell this project," said Macrina.
Under the federal mandate, the project must break ground at the end of this year.
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A proposed Liddell Drive project near Cheshire Bridge Road includes a container that would handle 10 million gallons of sewage overflow.
