A new water treatment plant is being built right now at the corner of Buffaloe Road and Benson Road in Garner and is scheduled to come online at Garner's Lake Benson in the fall of 2010. It'll add about 20 million gallons a day to Raleigh's available water supply capacity.
But the city isn't sure it can wait that long. Raleigh's mayor tells Eyewitness News the city is now seeking bids on how much it would cost to speed up the construction process so the plant would be ready several months earlier than planned, in the summer of 2009.
The plant is already set to cost about $100 million. Speeding up construction could cost anywhere from $5 million to $15 million, leaders say.
"We'll have to decide whether it's worth that additional amount of money, it'd be millions of dollars," says Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker. "Having the 20 million gallons a day would of course be a big benefit at times like this."
