Can’t we just redo 2003?

If you attended Gov. Sonny Perdue and Mayor Shirley Franklin’s joint press conference last week, you’d have thought that they found a cure for cancer, caught Osama bin Laden and reworked the budget so we’d all get a $2 million refund.

With a beaming Franklin at his side, Perdue proudly announced that he would help the city with its sewer crisis with 10 annual low-interest loans of $50 million.

Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, made a big announcement too. He’s supporting legislation that would allow the city to raise its sales tax by 1 percent.

The whole package was lauded as an early Christmas present from the state to the city.

But Perdue’s bailout, even if fast tracked, won’t deter Franklin from advocating a three-fold increase in sewer rates under her current $3.2 billion plan, and Johnson’s big idea would make Atlanta one of the country’s most taxing cities.

Sure, the loans and extra taxes will help, but the reality is that the “help” Perdue and Johnson have offered will do little to offset the mounting costs of living in Atlanta.

That, however, may not have been the point. The photo op and the Perdue/Johnson announcements will go a long way to convince — pressure may be a more accurate word — City Council members to approve Franklin’s plan, and the hefty rate hikes that come along with it.

The council already rejected Franklin’s plan once. The consequences, if Franklin fails to win over the council this time, are portrayed as nothing short of ruinous. Without the sewer fixes, upgrades and expansions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may choose to impose a moratorium on new sewer hook ups, which could cripple the intown Renaissance now under way. The EPA could also appoint what’s called a special master, a person who’d effectively take over specific operations of the city, including sewer operations and parts of the city’s budget.

Finally, a federal judge could find council members in contempt of court, and lock them up until they feel like approving Franklin’s rate increase.

That’s a lot of “coulds,” but under any scenario, 2004 is going to be a turbulent, and expensive, year for Atlanta. It’s hard to imagine things getting worse for Franklin, or for the city of Atlanta. But it will.

In less than a year, Live Oak landfill will close, leaving the city with no place to dump its garbage.

The Public Works department is coming up with a contingency plan, one that’s every bit as divisive, and almost as expensive as the sewer fiasco.

Public Works Commissioner David E. Scott is recommending that City Council raise solid waste fees an average of $50 a year per household. That’s on top of a $50 a year increase that went into effect in July.

But the big trash fight in City Hall won’t be over that rate increase. It’ll be fought over another part of Public Works’ agenda.

The city hired a consultant, Black & Veatch Corp., to come up with a plan to deal with the city’s trash once Live Oak closed. The consultant recommended building two solid waste transfer stations — one on the city’s north side and another on the south side — to act as temporary garbage warehouses until the trash can be loaded up on either trains or tractor-trailers and hauled off to landfills in outlying counties.

Public Works is looking to contract with a trash company to handle the city’s trash after Live Oak closes.

The request for bids, Scott says, “went out to existing handlers of waste around the city ... but for the most part [the request for a bid] is directed at transfer stations.”

It’s the fight over where those two trash depots are going to go that’ll raise the already scalding temperature in City Hall.

Residents obviously aren’t going to want one in their neighborhood, and council members will obviously try to look their best for the voters in their districts by fighting off the smelly garbage depots.

Franklin would not grant repeated requests for interviews to Creative Loafing because, according to her spokeswoman Sandra Walker, the mayor doesn’t want to talk about anything that she’ll be discussing in her upcoming State of the City address.

Already, 14 out of the 15 council members signed off on legislation that temporarily blocked the construction of solid waste transfer stations.

The one company that got in its paperwork to build a transfer station before the moratorium took effect, Brown-Ferris Industries, was solidly shot down by the Zoning Review Board thanks to strong opposition from several unhappy neighborhood groups and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

BFI filed a lawsuit in December to challenge the Zoning Review Board’s decision. The station, if BFI wins in the end, would go near the intersection of Marietta Boulevard and Bankhead Highway, across the street from the Bankhead MARTA station. The location perfectly fits the consultant’s recommendation for a transfer station on the north side of the city.

BFI filed its lawsuit days before a state tribunal upheld a state order to shut down Live Oak landfill.

Any company wanting to build a transfer station on the south side of the city will probably face even more opposition.

Three of the area’s largest landfills are clumped in or near south Atlanta.

All those landfills surround, or are surrounded by, predominantly black neighborhoods. One of those landfills, Live Oak, is closing in 12 months. And south Atlanta residents will be most unwelcoming to anyone — whether it’s a trash company, a council member or the mayor — aiming to build anything that has to do with garbage.

michael.wall@creativeloafing.com