Milledgeville — Baldwin County County Manager Carlos Tobar said that every county must do three things well: water, sewers, and roads.
In recent weeks, the county has worked to remedy number two on that list.
For the last six weeks, the county has replaced four miles of sewage lines in the Hardwick neighborhood in Milledgeville. The pipes were 50 years old and made of clay. Over time clay pipes can crack and cause sewer spills.
"If there happens to be a crack, the tree roots migrate towards that. They rupture the pipes and then you have raw sewage leaking it out," said Tobar.
A spill is exactly what happened to Tristajah Parham and her family earlier this year.
"One morning I just woke up it was like a smell, like a really, really bad smell. It was like stuff everywhere. It was all in my room on the carpet," Parham said.
The backup flooded the family's home with sewage causing them to have to relocate to a relative's house for two weeks while the house aired out and carpet was replaced with hardwood floors.
The smell was so gross that you couldn’t breathe it in because it would be harmful to you and it was going to mess up your nostrils," said Markee Armstrong, Parham's brother.
With help from a federal community development block grant, four miles of sewer pipe worth $2.4 million was replaced in the county. Tobar said that three more miles of pipe line is due to be replaced. He said it was just a matter of time before the pipes needed to be replaced.
"We knew we needed to do something but overall because the neighborhood is older, we knew we were going to have to replace these at some point," Tobar said.