By: Robin Ford Wallace, Staff Reporter

Dade County Water Authority Manager Doug Anderton did not greet the local press with actual enthusiasm. “My granddad always told me to beware of people who bought their ink by the barrel,” he said. 

But after accusations from a local fire chief at the February County Commission meeting drop-kicked the Water Authority into the spotlight, and after those concerns led to talk of restructuring the Authority’s supervision at this month’s meeting, Anderton seemed resigned to public interest and on Friday consented to an interview.

First of all, Anderton told the Sentinel that no one had yet formally spoken to him of any intention to change the makeup of the Water Authority’s board of directors, and that in any case such a change would make no difference to him. “I work for a board. Whoever the board is, if it’s the Commission, I’m going to do my best to run the Water Authority,” he said. “I’m going to do the best job I can do for whoever I work for.”

Secondly, he dismissed the notion that the way the Authority’s board of directors is currently selected, with members appointed by a grand jury, allows him to handpick his supervisors. “I’m always reluctant to make a recommendation to them,” he said.

The only time he suggests a name to the grand jury, said Anderton, is when someone volunteers to serve and asks him to be mentioned to the appointing body. Otherwise, he said, he tells them, “You’re asking me to pick my boss. I’d rather that y’all come up with your own names.”

Sometimes, said Anderton, someone on the grand jury will know of citizens willing to serve on the board, and it is not uncommon for the jury to reappoint incumbents if they seem to be doing a good job.

As it stands, the water board is composed of Jakie Smith, Charles Breedlove, William Pullen, Ted Dyer and Milton Owensby, with Anderton himself serving as secretary/treasurer. “In times past we’ve had a treasurer or a secretary,” he said. “But nobody wants to be secretary because they have to take the minutes.”

The Water Authority is not for profit, explained Anderton, a public utility answerable to the state Public Service Commission, and as such does not have much cash on hand apart from reserve funds required for its loan obligations. “You just try to set your rates to where you’re just breaking even,” he said. “Most rate increases come from cost of living or materials going up or a need for expansion of the system.”

In any case, the books of the Water Authority undergo an audit yearly, with the results sent to the state.  “I wouldn’t work without an audit,” said Anderton.

Questioned about statements made by the Commission’s Lamar Lowery that Dade citizens had trouble accessing public water for their homes, Anderton acknowledged there had been issues in the Bible Camp Road area with homeowners having to secure individual service lines, but said he wasn’t aware it was a widespread problem. “If there’s somebody else out there, I don’t know about it,” he said.

As for the accusations by Rising Fawn Fire Chief Roger Woodyard  that started the current push to change the water board – to wit, that the Water Authority had been negligent in repairing fire hydrants, to the point that they would be useless in case of a fire – Anderton said he’d been blindsided a little but that in hindsight he should have been paying more attention. “Truthfully, we probably were moving at too slow a pace to get them repaired,” he admitted, but he said he was now on it and had the problem well in hand.  “I’m committed to it,” he said.

At last week’s Commission meeting, Lamar Lowery mentioned the Water Authority’s holdings in Walker County. Anderton said there was no mystery there. The Water Authority had solicited Walker County customers since it first began running lines on Lookout Mountain in 1962, he said. 

This made sense geographically, since the roads on the mountain run in and out between county lines, as well as financially, since Walker customers were needed to amortize the costs of building and maintaining the system.

That was the way the Water Authority evolved before his time, said Anderton, and currently Walker residents make up 13 percent of the Authority’s customer base. Walker itself has no water lines on top of the mountain, he said.

And since the Dade Water Authority supplied water to the area, it was natural for it to assume responsibility for a new wastewater treatment plant erected in recent years by the Canyon Ridge golf course and housing development atop Lookout, said Anderton. The development lies partly in Dade but mostly in Walker. 

The Water Authority’s interest in the Canyon Ridge wastewater plant, Anderton explained, is a formal rather than a financial one. “We have not one copper penny in it,” he said. Canyon Ridge paid to build the plant and continues paying to operate it.

But Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division will not issue a wastewater treatment permit to a private entity and thus turned to the Water Authority as the logical permit holder. “The EPD is looking for somebody that’s going to always be there,” said Anderton.

Under the agreement, the Dade Water Authority would be responsible for operating the wastewater plant in the event the developer failed. “But in return, they put up a bond that would pay for that operation,” said Anderton.

So Dade would not lose money one way or the other, he said, and in any case Canyon Ridge is presently negotiating with Walker County to take over the plant. So he sees the Water Authority’s interest in the wastewater plant as a non-issue, neither an advantage nor a disadvantage for Dade.

Anderton said it would be presumptuous to assume he would still have a job if the County Commission does reorganize his governing board but that he has no retirement plans. “If they want my services, I’ll be here,” he said.

In October, Anderton will celebrate his 39th anniversary with the Water Authority, where he came on board in 1971 fresh from college. He said he is proud of his service there and of the consistently excellent water quality he has delivered to the county. “I love what I do,” he said. “I love interacting with the people.  Sometimes it scares me to death to think about not having that.”