North Fulton Co. water treatment facility gets largest infrastructure upgrade in county’s history

A facility you’ve likely never seen or thought about, but impacts millions of people in North Fulton County just got a major improvement.

The improvements to the Big Creek Water Reclamation facility in Roswell is the largest infrastructure investment ever in Fulton County.

The $350 million project renovates and expands the facility.

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Valves opened on the expansion in July increasing capacity from 24 to an average of 32 million gallons a day to meet the need in ever-growing North Fulton.

“This facility is more and more important as time passes so we’re making an investment today for the future,” Pitts said.

The site, west of the river, releases treated water back into the Chattahoochee River where millions downstream in Cobb County and Atlanta get their drinking water.

The newest technology is designed to be a good neighbor with better cleaning of the water and cutting down on impacts, especially smell.

“It treats all of the basins and eliminates odors from the surrounding community which is a big thing that needed to have happen,” Brown and Caldwell Project Manager Kelly Comstock said.

Big Creek is now the most advanced and complex water reclamation facility in the entire southeast and the biggest expansion in the country.

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“People are very confident this facility is going to serve North Fulton, primarily Roswell, Alpharetta, and a little bit of Johns Creek as well as Milton, and even Sandy Springs for the next 50 years,” Fulton County Public Works Director David Clark said.

At its peak, the facility can now handle double the 32 million gallons a day and they recently had to put that to the test right after Hurricane Helene.

For two days the facility pumped out more than 60 million gallons a day.

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