City commissioners voted 5-0 Thursday evening to approve a 10-year agreement to pay Lady Lake $19,000 per month to pump the city’s sewer effluent to Lady Lake’s million gallon-per-day sewer treatment plant. The cost will go ulp as more homes are added to Fruitland Park’s side of the system.
The agreement—about eight months in the making—is now headed for Lady Lake’s Town Commission for final approval.
The project will significantly increase the efficiency of Lady Lake’s treatment plant and laudable water reuse program.
Former Fruitland Park Mayor Joe Grubb and former Lady Lake Town Manager Cliff Burgess first proposed a joint agreement to build a regional capacity treatment plant back in 1988.
“It would be better to have one big sewer treatment plant than to have a whole bunch of little bitty plants all around,” Grubb then told Orlando Sentinel reporter Peter Mitchell.
Eventually, the two governments chose different paths. Fruitland Park settled on a little bitty plant while Lady Lake built a larger system with a regional capacity.
Fruitland Park will spend approximately $1.4 million to build the 1.7-mile sewer line from its treatment plant on Spring Lake Road to Lady Lake—that’s as much as a regional plant would have cost both cities 30 years ago.
The Villages is putting up another $500,000 to build a sewer line and pumping station on County Road 466A to serve the Villages of Fruitland Park. That line will also serve future commercial development anticipated along the roadway.
Fruitland Park will chip in $154,000 in engineering costs to link the 466A leg to the Lady Lake plant.
Commissioners are confident Lady Lake will approve the sewer deal, calling it a win-win-win. Thursday evening, they authorized more than $126,000 in engineering costs to jump-start the project, which will commence as soon as Lady Lake inks its copy of the agreement
