The Douglasville-Douglas County Water and Sewer Authority (WSA) board unanimously approved bylaw changes Tuesday that made it possible to name a new chairman and vice-chairman.

The seven-member board, at its regular 5:30 p.m. meeting, also approved several bids for expansion of the Bear Creek water treatment plant which is the second phase of a two-phase program to increase WSA’s drinking water capacity. The first phase was the raising the Dog River reservoir dam 10 feet to increase raw water storage capacity from 1.2 to 1.9 billion gallons. That work was completed in May, and the reservoir has now filled about half the additional capacity.

The newly adopted bylaws amendment, given first reading at the June 9 WSA meeting, declares that the chairman will always be the board member with the most seniority. The chairman will serve a two-year term and the position will rotate to the person with the next highest seniority and who has been serving as vice-chairman.

The bylaws change was quickly followed by the official voting of Craig McManus as chairman and Larry Yockey as vice-chairman. Both terms run through April 2, 2011.

McManus has been serving as acting chairman since April when both McManus and Yockey were nominated for chairman and neither could obtain the needed four-member majority vote. MaManus replaces Dudley Spruill whose WSA board term and chairman seat ended in April.

The Bear Creek water plant work will expand the plant’s treatment capacity from to 16 million to 23 million gallons per day.

“We expect work to begin within the next two months,” Pete Frost, WSA executive director, told the board. “It is a 24-month contract.” This would make completion time in the summer of 2011.

The low bid on Division A of the Bear Creek work was won by Choate Construction Company for $28.68 million and Division B by Haren Construction Company for $7.29 million.

The board also approved several other bids to supply pipe and fittings, meters, technical services and security for the project.

In unrelated action, the board approved several annual contracts for plant chemicals and a $286,647 contract with the Association County Commissioners of Georgia’s Interlocal Risk Management Agency for renewal of insurance.