Faced with rising sludge hauling and disposal costs, Gwinnett County, Georgia, retained CDM to evaluate options for residuals disposal and ultimately pilot, design, and oversee construction of a new residuals handling facility to dewater the filter backwash water residuals generated at their 150-million-gallons-a-day (mgd) surface water treatment plant, the Lanier filter plant, and their future 150-mgd Shoal Creek filter plant. Pilot testing comprised two stages, a bench-scale screening of various dewatering technologies followed by pilot-scale confirmation and optimization of the chosen dewatering technology. Evaluated dewatering technologies included belt filter presses, plate-and-frame filter presses, and centrifuges. Once the pilot data was gathered, it was used to develop the design criteria for the full-scale facility. Design features include inclined plate settlers and picket fence thickeners using polymer coagulant, a sludge transfer and chemical conditioning system featuring liquid lime and ferric chloride chemical conditioning, and two plate-and-frame filter presses that discharge the dewatered solids into roll-off containers located below. The filter presses are a mixed pack configuration that have fixed-volume recessed chamber plates alternating with diaphragm style plates that can be pressurized to compress the sludge further. The new facility was designed in a manner that met the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) backwash recycle rule, which requires that any recycle stream be routed to the head of the treatment plant. Another requirement was that the new facility also reduced the solids loading on the existing filter backwash sedimentation basin and sludge collection system, which were overtaxed due to the increasing plant production needs. Construction of the new facility ran from late 2000 to mid 2002. The facility is now on-line, allowing the county to begin to realize substantial savings in sludge hauling and disposal costs. Includes tables, figures.