MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — It's been more than a week since a failed pump caused water outages across the city of Milledgeville.
Baldwin County's Public Health Department says more than 150 businesses and restaurants were affected. However, they say they've developed a plan to fight the problem.
Environmental Health Manager, Colin Duke, of the Baldwin County Health Department says they're used to Milledgeville's water outages, but the most recent one was unusual.
"Normally, the outages we’ve had before they’ve had a break in the ground and had to dig it up and fix it,” Duke explains. “This one was scary because we really didn't know when they were gonna get a pump and be able to get everything back up and going."
Duke says 90% of food service places run on city water. So, restaurants' doors close often.
"I had several of them say, ‘Man, we've lost thousands of dollars.’ Even a short-term shut down, it’s really costly for them. We don’t want them to shut down because we know this is their livelihood, so we do this plan so they can stay open but they can do it safely,” Duke says.
They call it the Water Interruption Plan.
Once there's an outage, or a water boil advisory due to low water pressure, the office contacts each restaurant to switch to their personalized plan.
“They’ll fill out the paperwork on it. They’ll explain how they’re going to take care of the food,” Duke says. “We encourage them to do a simple menu, shut the ice machine down, serve the canned drinks and bottled water. A lot of them will say, ‘Hey, we’re just going to run our drive-thru only.’”
The Brick in downtown Milledgeville is just one out of hundreds of restaurants of businesses affected by the city's water problems.
“Because of that plan, we're able to adapt very quickly when these things come up,” says the Brick’s Byron Wellsman.
He says they've had to shut their doors before due to water problems, but in the past year-and-a-half, they've nailed down their plan.
“Because we're a pizza place, to make that dough, to make that pasta, we have to have water,” Wellsman explains, “So we began to prep a lot of dough in preparation for that. Once we fell into that water boil advisory, we then have to begin boiling that water and letting it cool. Usually something that’s very simple, very quick to make our dough– it’s now become a much more difficult process," Wellsman explains .
He says they buy thousands of dollars worth of canned soda, ice, and water for drinking and handwashing.
“It involves things like the investments in a high temperature dishwasher. You know, so that we don't have to run out every time these things happen and buy paper plates.”
Wellsman says they can operate at 100% when there's a water outage. However, for other restaurants, they might not be so lucky.
“Other folks that we’ve been working with and organizing with, they’ve lost tens of thousands of dollars each day that they are closed. They want to have the types of plans, but based on their types of plans, they just don't have a plan that keeps them open,” Wellsman says.
He says something must change because the problem is larger than just affecting restaurants.
“Our schools closed down, our employees had trouble with childcare. The economic impact of these outages is in the millions of dollars. We’re losing millions of dollars from the adaptations, the changes, just not being open,” he says. “When these things happen it’s a huge drain,” Wellsman says.
He says he and other business owners just want to work towards a solution.
“The problem isn't fixed, it's just been patched. and I think the best thing we can do as a community is come together and really take it to our elected leaders. We want to be more active and engaged with our elected officials. Build relationships with them. We want to make sure that they know that we’re there to help them find solutions so we get the basic water services that our community needs.”
City Manager Hank Griffeth says the Mayor and City Council are scheduled to consider an engineering contract to fully upgrade the water plant at their May 23 meeting.
As for repairs to the water plant, they've replaced the motor that caused the most recent outage.