Council:

Continued from Page 1 items linger longer than we all would like, and this is one of the last if not the last one,” District 1 Councilman John Paulson said. “So, I'm glad it's here, let's take care of it.”

In a presentation to the City Council, Sandy Springs Director of Facilities Dave Wells said the city went back to the drawing board several times to design the water diversion system in the most cost-effective and least intrusive methods possible.

“Due to the complexity, as well as mitigating the project cost and disruption to the site, staff had to redesign the project to take into consideration existing site conditions, construction costs and site availability,” Wells said, adding that the project will require coordination with events scheduled on City Green during the summer.

Wells said the project will run pipes around the cistern, allowing stormwater to bypass it so the 300,000 gallons of water can fully drain over a two-week period. And because a bypass wasn’t built into the original designs and the time the cistern takes to drain, they’re unable to determine whether previous waterproofing attempts have been successful.

“Once we get a little bit of rain in there, we'll probably like a quarter of an inch of rain on the roads but we get about six feet of water in the cistern,” he said.

As part of the project, he said they will also need to clean or replace pumps in the cistern that feed the irrigation system and fountains, which are currently being fed by municipal water.

Once the project is complete the city can begin reusing stormwater for everyday tasks, which was an initial priority with the City Springs campus design, Mayor Rusty Paul said.

“It's an environmental thing,” Paul said. “One of the things when we built this facility, we wanted to make it as sustainable as possible. That meant we made this building as highly energy efficient as we possibly could, and we wanted to capture the water on the site for reuse.”

To fund the project, Wells said the city will have to modify its 2023 budget and reallocate $380,000 from a different city project. Councilmembers unanimously approved the budget amendment and funding reallocation at the meeting.

As part of a pending lawsuit against City Springs project designers over the cistern’s designs, Paul said Sandy Springs will attempt to recoup the project funding.

“We're expecting to be reimbursed for a major part of this, if not all, after that litigation is concluded,” he said.