City of Suwanee issued the following announcement on August 25.
The City of Suwanee and Gwinnett County are finalizing steps to transfer water service for the City of Suwanee water customers to Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources, effective December 1, 2021. Suwanee water customers will realize numerous benefits from the transition to Gwinnett County’s award winning, state-of-the-art water system.
At nearly 70 years old, the city’s aging water system is in need of costly upgrades. With a limited number of customers (just 360) and little opportunity to grow or expand, the City of Suwanee’s water system is simply too small to be sustainable and cost-effective in the long term. Greater scale and abundant resources enable the county to maintain, replace, rehabilitate, and upgrade the system as necessary. The county invested nearly $1 billion over the last two decades to ensure that the water processed and returned to the environment is among the highest quality in the country.
The city’s small water system will easily incorporate into the Gwinnett County system. As part of the expected agreement, Gwinnett County committed to making $500,000 in beneficial upgrades in the coming years, including pipe replacements and adding fire hydrants. The city’s existing wells and water tower will be removed from the system; however, at this time, there are no plans to remove the iconic water tower from the Suwanee skyline.
Suwanee water services customers will automatically transition to Gwinnett County on December 1. Since Suwanee’s water system is already connected to Gwinnett’s, there are no anticipated water service outages during this transition. The Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources offers several ways to make payments, including by mail, phone, and online, where they also offer automatic and paperless billing. The city will also continue to accept payments from walk-in customers at City Hall. The city and county have similar water rate structures, so water bills should remain comparable. Those customers who submitted deposits to the city will receive a refund; the county will not be charging fees or deposits.
Because Suwanee uses ground water and the county uses surface water, the county’s water may taste different to some, though not drastically so. Suwanee water customers will likely be familiar with the taste, as Gwinnett County water has been used on occasion in the city system.
For more information regarding the water service transition, please contact City of Suwanee Public Works Director Bob Dean at 770-904-3373.
Original source can be found here.
Alerts Sign-up