With no negotiation at hand over the future of Hall County’s water supply, Gainesville officials have applied for a permit that would give them rights to withdraw water from Cedar Creek Reservoir.

An advertisement on the Georgia Environmental Protection Division’s website shows that Gainesville’s Public Utilities Department applied for a permit to withdraw a maximum of 9.5 million gallons of water from the reservoir daily.

The city also applied for a permit to withdraw 20 million gallons of water per day from the North Oconee River to pump into the reservoir for storage, according to Kelly Randall, the city’s public utilities director.

The permit application is under review and has no specific time frame for completion, EPD spokesman Kevin Chambers said.

If the EPD decides to issue a draft permit for the withdrawals, a final permit would be subject to a 30-day public comment period, he said.

For months, the city and county have been at loggerheads over the reservoir’s future. Located in the Oconee River basin, Cedar Creek is the only immediate backup supply available to customers of the municipal water supplier if last year’s federal ruling limits access to Lake Lanier’s water.

In July 2009, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson ruled that much of metro Atlanta’s use of Lake Lanier as a source of drinking water was not valid.

The ruling threatens to cut the ability of Gainesville’s Public Utilities Department, the main municipal water supplier to Hall County residents, to withdraw from Lake Lanier by more than half.

Yet city and county officials have yet to come to an agreement over the county’s reserve supply. Gainesville owns the reservoir, but a 2006 agreement that deeded it to the city department never mentioned the permit needed to withdraw the water. Thus, the county still holds the only permit to withdraw water from the reservoir.

The county permit allows a maximum of 2 million gallons per day to be withdrawn from the reservoir. Cedar Creek Reservoir is capable of providing 11.5 million gallons of water per day.

A disagreement over how to move forward has stalled plans to build a plant to withdraw, treat and distribute Cedar Creek’s water to county water customers.

Gainesville Mayor Pro Tem Danny Dunagan confirmed Wednesday that the city had filed its own application for the ability to withdraw the water. City officials have previously said they planned to move forward on the design of a water treatment plant. Randall said the search for engineers to design the project is under way.

“We’re just trying to get this Cedar Creek thing going forward,” Dunagan said. “We have directed staff to start the design work for (a water treatment plant at Cedar Creek), and once that design work is done, then we’re ready to go and the county’s just holding us up and not abiding by their agreement (from) 2006, so we’re just trying to go forward.”

Hall County’s Assistant Administrator Phil Sutton said Wednesday he was not aware the application had been filed.

Until Wednesday, Hall Public Works Director Ken Rearden said he had only heard rumors of such an application. Rearden said county officials plan to review the city’s application soon.

Tom Oliver, the chairman of the Hall County Board of Commissioners, was caught off guard by the news Wednesday.

“If you’re going to EPD to go around Hall County to after the permit, then how does that work toward county-city relationships?” Oliver asked. “I mean, if you’re over there saying ‘hey, we need to sit down and negotiate it and we need to work something out’ ... and then the city’s going to EPD to try to take the county’s water for nothing? Is this what negotiation’s about?”

Dunagan said city staff are still trying to negotiate with county officials. Randall said the permit application should not affect recent negotiations because the city made the decision in early March. The application was filed March 25 and posted on the EPD website May 5.

“We’re applying for the permit in case negotiations break down,” Dunagan said. “We’re not sure we’ll get the permit. You know, that’s not a done deal just because we applied.”

Rearden, who has been involved with negotiations with city officials on the issue, said the groups have been making “some pretty decent progress” in recent meetings.

And Randall, Rearden’s city counterpart, said he doesn’t think the application will derail that progress. He said city officials decided weeks before the two governments resumed negotiations to submit the application.

“I’m hoping we can come to an amicable solution here pretty soon,” Rearden said.