A 1998 update to the County's Water and Sewer Master Plan projecting infrastructure needs for the next 50 years revealed the need to double the capacity of the County's only water treatment plant. Since the site of the existing plant was too small for this size expansion, the decision was made to construct a new plant. The Project as designed included the new Shoal Creek Filter Plant, a second intake to withdraw water from the County's only raw water source – Lake Lanier – and the water lines needed to get the water from the lake to the Shoal Creek plant. To provide redundancy to the system, DPU also decided to construct water lines to share raw and finished water between the new and existing plants, so that if either plant or intake were not operational all DPU customers would still receive reliable water service. In addition, a new reservoir was planned to hold water from Lake Lanier in reserve as a backup to the two intakes on the lake.