When it came right down to it, neither Water and Wastewater Treatment Authority (WWTA) personnel nor Mahan Gap Road residents could say with 100 percent accuracy what life would be like in the area if a sewage treatment plant were built nearby.
That lack of knowledge – and there was no way either side ever would know before it was built – prompted the Hamilton County Commission, following on the heels of a similar vote in November by the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Agency, to vote 6-3 on Wednesday to deny a permit allowing a sewer plant to be built.
However, commissioners’ actions have consequences, perhaps in sooner-than-planned tax increases, likely higher water rates and stagnating housing starts in the fast-growing east end of the county.
Where votes count, though, commissioners against the permit (Chip Baker, Chester Bankston, Randy Fairbanks, Katherlyn Geter, Tim Boyd and Chairwoman Sabrena Smedley) are more likely to be remembered as being on the side of homeowners and less by whether their actions curbed growth or caused anyone’s taxes (or fees) to rise if they aren’t on record as raising them.
Organized homeowners in the eastern end of the county – at least in one particular area on Mahan Gap Road – may have dodged a bullet, but they cannot escape a sewage treatment plant.