Fulton and DeKalb Counties, Georgia
Commercial Plumbing Atlanta: Priced by What the Water Carries Out, Gated by What the Name Already Owes
Atlanta charges a business for its wastewater in two quite different ways, and neither of them is a permit threshold. One follows the pipe. The other follows the company name.
The first is a tariff. The Department of Watershed Management defines wastewater as normal strength if it meets the quality standards established for typical residential use, and charges a load-based surcharge on anything above that, using cost factors for each pollutant.
The second is a gate. If a water account has been flagged for unauthorised usage, it cannot be resolved online at all, and the City Code bars establishing any new account for a customer with delinquent charges on any account in that customer's name. For an operator with several sites, one unpaid address can freeze a new one.
Discuss an Atlanta Commercial PremisesPlumber Atlanta: The Main City Page
Nitrogen Costs More Than Four Times What Carbon Does, and It Starts Biting Twenty Times Sooner
The surcharge rates that took effect on 1 July 2021 are worth reading as a set rather than individually, because the relationship between them is a design decision and it is actionable.
Chemical oxygen demand is charged at $0.16 above 500 milligrams per litre. Total suspended solids at $0.17 above 250. Total Kjeldahl nitrogen at $0.70 above 25.
Two things follow. Nitrogen is priced at more than four times the rate of the other two, and its threshold is a twentieth of the carbon one. A discharge that would sail under the COD line can be well over the nitrogen line, and it will be charged at the highest of the three rates for the privilege.
The Department gives its reasoning plainly. The fees are charged to industries that discharge high strength wastewater into the public sewers and are assessed to recover the cost incurred in handling those wastes, ensuring that dischargers of high strength wastewater pay their fair share of treatment costs. Wastewater from industrial users often contains solids and organic matter at higher concentrations than residential wastewater.
The nitrogen premium is not arbitrary. Removing nitrogen at a reclamation centre is a biological process that costs more per unit than settling solids or oxidising carbon, and the surcharge is a cost recovery mechanism rather than a penalty. The tariff is telling operators something true about the plant they discharge into.
Which makes it a real input into equipment and process decisions rather than a compliance afterthought. Anything that concentrates protein waste, and any process that puts nitrogen compounds into a drain, is choosing the most expensive of the three lines. The Department publishes the formula reference and a number for its Division of Industrial Pretreatment, and asking before installing is cheaper than modelling afterwards.
What Follows the Pipe, and What Follows the Name
Every other commercial page in this series sorts a city's rules by what a business does. Atlanta needs two columns, because half its obligations attach to the discharge and half attach to the account holder.
Follows the pipe: strength
Wastewater is normal strength if it meets the standards established for typical residential use. Above that, a load-based surcharge is assessed using cost factors for each pollutant.
Follows the pipe: three separate lines
COD above 500 mg/l, TSS above 250 mg/l and TKN above 25 mg/l, each with its own rate. Three thresholds, three prices, and a discharge can cross one without crossing the others.
Follows the pipe: it is a tariff
Nothing here decides whether you are inside a regime. It decides what you pay once you are, which is a different instrument from the permit thresholds other cities publish.
Follows the name: no new account
The City Code states that no new accounts shall be established for customers with delinquent charges on any account in the name of such customers, or on any partial payment plan, until those charges are paid in full.
Follows the name: in person only
Once an account is flagged, no online service is available. Resolution is in person at the investigations office, between 7:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., and total bill amounts cannot be given over the phone.
Follows the name: certified funds
Money orders or cashier's cheques only. No cash, no debit and no credit cards. Company cheques are accepted from commercial accounts, which is the one concession businesses get that households do not.
Card four is the one that changes how a growing business should think about arrears. In most cities an unpaid utility bill is a problem at that address. In Atlanta it is a problem attached to the customer, so an operator with a disputed balance at one site can find a lease at a new site stalled on a water account it cannot open.
Card six is a small, revealing detail. A regime that will take a company cheque but not a corporate card has been designed around irreversibility rather than convenience.
The Gate
A Flagged Account Is Not an Online Problem, and the Document List Is Unusually Precise
If water service has been interrupted and a notice of violation for unauthorised usage has been issued, or the account is flagged, the City requires a new water service account to be established, and it publishes exactly how.
It is an in-person process at the investigations office, with published hours of 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and the City states that no online service is available once an account has been flagged. Payment is in certified funds only: money orders or cashier's cheques, with no cash, debit or credit accepted. Commercial accounts may pay by company cheque.
The documentation list is where the precision shows. From a property owner: a completed new service application, a closing statement, closing disclosure, settlement statement or warranty deed containing the physical address inside the body of the document, and government issued photo identification. A property manager or LLC must present a managerial agreement or statement of authorisation to act on the owner's behalf.
Two refusals are stated outright. A tax bill or tax records will not be accepted as proof of ownership, and from a tenant a renewed lease is not acceptable, only the original with both owner and tenant signatures.
Those two exclusions tell you what the City has seen before. Paying tax on a property is not the same as owning it, and a renewal can be produced by one party without the other. The list is shaped by past disputes, which is why it will not bend on the day.
All new customers are billed from the time of occupancy, and the City says customers should be prepared to pay any back-bill balance in full to avoid service termination, with payment plans possible in some instances on payment of a required deposit.
The Utility and the Code Index Do Not Agree About Which Section Authorises the Surcharge
The Department states that the industrial wastewater surcharges are authorised under Section 154-27 of the Atlanta City Code, and that the surcharge fees are assessed using a formula detailed in Section 154-278(b) which uses cost factors for each pollutant to determine the load based surcharge.
The Code of Ordinances index lists Section 154-27 as Credits and adjustments, sitting inside Article II, on water and sewer billing and collection procedures. That is a different subject from an industrial surcharge authority.
The likeliest explanation is a dropped digit in the utility's own reference, given the formula citation is in the 154-27x range. We are not going to assert that, because we could not open the code text to check: the host serving the Atlanta Code of Ordinances did not respond to us at all while this page was written.
So both references are printed and neither is picked. If you are relying on the section number for something that matters, such as a dispute or an appeal, take it from the current code rather than from any web page including this one.
On the subject of disputes, the City does publish a route. Review requests covering bill disputes, adjustment requests, appeals hearing requests, monthly payments and reported repairs go to customer service at its two central locations, and a Water and Sewer Appeals Board exists as a named body. A commercial account facing a surcharge assessment it believes is wrong has a forum, and it is not the same door as the investigations office.
One further published mechanic worth knowing for a commercial account. The City Code requires a late fee of 5 per cent of the account balance or $5, whichever is greater. The Department notes that it had historically charged only the 5 per cent, that a performance audit identified this, and that it now complies strictly with the code. A utility publishing that it had been under-charging against its own ordinance is a rarer document than it sounds.
Six Commercial Regimes, and Not One of Them Regulates the Same Thing
This is the sixth city page in the series, and the completed table is the strongest evidence we have that commercial plumbing obligations do not transfer between cities at all.
| City | What its commercial regime is actually about |
|---|---|
| Phoenix | Deadlines, in two code chapters running in opposite directions. See our Phoenix commercial plumbing page. |
| San Diego | A whole sector permitted up front, with the neighbours investigated after a spill. See our San Diego commercial plumbing page. |
| Los Angeles | An exemption that ends the moment a business causes a stoppage. See our Los Angeles commercial plumbing page. |
| Sacramento area | Seven independent routes into one permit regime. See our Sacramento commercial plumbing page. |
| Denver | Decommissioning. What has to be terminated and verified before a new permit issues. See our Denver commercial plumbing page. |
| Atlanta | A tariff on discharge strength, and a gate attached to the customer rather than the premises. |
The nearest neighbour in that list is Sacramento, and the difference is worth being precise about. Sacramento publishes thresholds that decide whether a business is inside a permit regime at all, including one expressed in pounds of loading per day. Atlanta's figures are not entry tests. They are prices, per milligram per litre, above a line defined by what an ordinary household discharges.
One regime tells you whether you are in. The other tells you what being in costs. A business operating in both cities needs both answers and neither city gives the other one.
Commercial Plumbing Atlanta: Tariffs, Gates and Appeals
How discharge strength is priced, why nitrogen costs the most, what happens to a flagged account, and the code section two sources disagree about.
Through an industrial wastewater surcharge. The Department states that wastewater is normal strength if it meets the wastewater quality standards established for typical residential use, and that fees are charged to industries discharging high strength wastewater to recover the cost of handling those wastes. The surcharge is assessed using a formula that applies cost factors for each pollutant to determine a load based charge.
Effective 1 July 2021 the Department published COD at $0.16 above 500 mg/l, TSS at $0.17 above 250 mg/l, and TKN at $0.70 above 25 mg/l. We print those with the effective date because rates change on their own cycle and a stale figure is worse than none. Confirm current values with the Division of Industrial Pretreatment.
Because removing it costs more. Nitrogen is priced at more than four times the rate applied to chemical oxygen demand, and its threshold is a twentieth of the carbon one, so a discharge can be comfortably under the COD line and well over the nitrogen line. For a kitchen or a laundry choosing a process, that relationship is a genuine input rather than a compliance footnote.
We are printing two answers because our sources disagree. The Department states the surcharges are authorised under Section 154-27 of the Atlanta City Code, with the formula at Section 154-278(b). The Code of Ordinances index lists 154-27 as Credits and adjustments, in the article on water and sewer billing and collection. We could not open the code text to settle it, so take the section number from the current code if it matters.
A new water service account has to be established, and the process is in person only at the investigations office, with published hours of 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The City states that no online service is available once an account has been flagged, and that total bill amounts cannot be provided by phone.
No. The City states that only certified funds are accepted, meaning money orders or cashier’s cheques, with no cash, debit or credit card payments taken at that location. Commercial accounts may pay by company cheque, which is the one concession businesses get that households do not.
The City cites Atlanta City Code Section 154-114.1 for the rule that no new accounts shall be established for customers with delinquent charges on any account in the name of such customers, or for customers on any partial payment plan agreement, until those charges are paid in full. For an operator with several sites, that makes arrears a portfolio problem rather than a site problem.
A completed new service application, plus a closing statement, closing disclosure, settlement statement or warranty deed with the physical address inside the body of the document, plus government issued photo identification. It states explicitly that a tax bill or tax records will not be accepted. A property manager or LLC must present a managerial agreement or statement of authorisation.
Yes. The City directs review requests covering bill disputes, adjustment requests, appeals hearing requests, monthly payments and reported repairs to customer service at its two central locations, and it names a Water and Sewer Appeals Board. That is a different door from the investigations office that handles flagged accounts.
No. The only figures on this page are ones the City or the Department publishes itself, with their effective dates attached where they exist. Commercial work varies too much by building, use, process and scope for a headline number to be useful, and this site does not publish prices.
Sources, One Printed Disagreement, and What Was Left Out
The surcharge rates, thresholds, reasoning and code references come from the Department of Watershed Management's industrial surcharge page. The flagged account process, the documentation lists, the certified funds rule and the Code Section 154-114.1 citation come from its illegal consumption notice page. The appeals route comes from its account adjustment page.
THE DISAGREEMENT IS PRINTED ABOVE AND NOT RESOLVED. The utility cites Section 154-27 as the surcharge authority; the code index gives that section a different subject. The host serving the Atlanta Code of Ordinances did not respond to us, so the code text itself could not be read to settle it, and we would rather show the conflict than pick a side we cannot verify.
Deliberately not covered because other pages own them. Backflow prevention, which does not appear on this page at all, because our Phoenix commercial plumbing page carries that regime. Grease interception, which likewise appears nowhere, because our San Diego commercial plumbing page carries the equipment and the programme. Both subjects are named in a single line on the Atlanta city page and neither is developed anywhere in this cluster. Those allocations were written down before any of the six commercial pages in this series was drafted and have now been held for three batches running.
Also left out: the permit-threshold framing that our Sacramento and Los Angeles pages own, which is the nearest neighbour to the surcharge and is deliberately not restated; the decommissioning sequence on our Denver page; and the industry breakdown, service menu and maintenance agreement argument, which our national commercial plumbing page owns. The categorical industrial user list is published by the City elsewhere and a partial version here would be worse than none.
Related Atlanta pages: sewer line repair, drain cleaning and emergency plumbing. For the wider region see our Georgia service areas, or get in touch.
No office, address, crew or response time of ours is stated for Atlanta, and we are not claiming to be based in this city.
Everything above was read from published City of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management material at the time of writing. Surcharge rates, thresholds, code references, office hours, accepted payment methods and documentation requirements all change. Nothing here is a determination about a specific premises, a legal opinion, or a substitute for asking the Division of Industrial Pretreatment directly.