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Our View Could Thomasville's delayed water plant derail economic development here? A growing contingent is worried that it very well could, while Mayor Sheldon Day maintains that it will all work out in the end. A recent meeting regarding the Louisiana-Pacific plant under construction here pegs its completion date in October 2007. The earliest possible completion date for the water plant is March 2008. Complicating matters is the issue that Thomasville will also have to construct it's own water intake along the Alabama River. Day says even if the water plant is not completed before the L-P mill's start, there will be plenty of water available to meet all the water needs placed on the water system. What Day is calculating is the usual drop in water demand towards the end of the summer months. If Thomasville can avoid a severe drought next year, the city's normal water demand will be dropping by the time the plant starts to ramp up operation, essentially giving the city's water system the entire winter and spring to get things online. If there are any delays in getting the L-P plant up and running, it only buys Thomasville more time. But in a worst-case scenario, a severe drought and an early completion of the plant, we wonder if Day's rosy predictions will hold less than a year from now. And drought in recent summers has become almost commonplace. The only difference will be the severity of it. So far, Thomasville and all of the Pine Hill water plant's customers have been able to avoid water rationing during the summer despite Pine Hill's water treatment plant running at full capacity at times this past summer, will we be again be lucky next year? Only time will tell.
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