MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — The City of Milledgeville says they may spend up to $100 million to fix their long-running water problems.
They spoke about their plans to folks at their mid-year review at Central Georgia Technical College Wednesday.
For years, people in town have dealt with broken pipes, broken pumps, outages, and boil-water warnings.
13WMAZ’s Jessica Cha breaks down the plan and what folks have to say about it.
“What is the elephant in the room?” asks Mayor Mary Parham-Copelan to a room of over 60 business owners, education leaders, and elected officials. “That is, what are we doing about our water issues?"
Parham-Copelan says she knows folks have gone through a lot.
“The water is our business, and we want to make sure that we are delivering the services that we provide,” she says.
City manager Hank Griffeth began by explaining the cause of their most recent water outage.
“Once the water drained out of all the tanks, the smaller pump could not keep up with the necessary capacity,” he explains. “That's when people started running out of water."
However, say they have a plan.
One part they’ve been working on even before April's water loss.
“Looking at the engineering contract for modification of both the water treatment and wastewater treatment plants.”
Griffeth says they hope to approve an estimated $80 million contract with engineers for upgrades at their next council meeting on May 23.
“You’re probably looking at six to eight months for the engineering work, then it has to bid, you get your contractors in, and get your materials. Quite frankly, in terms of plant modifications, we’re looking at three years down the road before it’s completed,” Griffeth explains.
That includes upgrades to the computer system, SCADA, that runs their waterworks.
“That's $1.5 million right off the bat that we're spending in order to get real-time data on what's happening, both in our plants and delivery infrastructure."
Next is fixing their pipes.
He says this work will go faster and will happen simultaneously as the upgrades to the plant. He says they'll replace their oldest, most troublesome pipes starting with Montgomery, South Wayne, Green, North Wayne, Mcintosh, and North Columbia streets.
“$150 a foot to replace it,” he says. “As soon as GDOT says that we can, and we can find a contractor, we will be putting that pipe in the ground and changing those people over.”
He says this work would probably take six to eight months for work replacing the pipes to really begin.
Griffeth says they’ll also be considering getting additional storage tanks of water. They would go in specific areas like hospitals and schools, so it could provide a few days of water without having shut down operations in an emergency.
He says he wants folks to take away one thing.
"We're working on it. We were already working on it."
City leaders opened up the floor for questions.
A few business owners whose doors had to close due to loss of water say they’re grateful for the information, but they still have some questions.
“We are excited to review that information a little deeper,” says The Brick’s Byron Wellman. “One of the things that we’re more concerned about is the urgency. They’ve kind of given some ballpark timelines, and I think for our businesses really need to know how quickly this problem can be fixed.”
Surcheros owner and operator Kyle Cullars says the latest shutdown hit his business.
“Our restaurant had to shut down for almost a week,” he explains. “When we did reopen, we were able to do online pickup orders only, but we were not able to quickly reopen for dining in,” he explains.
Cullars says he appreciates the work of the city and water plant workers.
“I was very impressed to see our local officials come out, but I think it's a shame that they continue to be put into these situations because we haven't taken a more proactive approach,” he explains.
Cullars is now a part of “Fix Our Water Now," a group of more than 12 Milledgeville businesses banding together to address the city’s water issues. He says he hopes his group can help create a more concrete timeline and plan for the work to know when water outages will stop.
“There’s so much more that can still be done. Our group pledges to do anything we can to help them with putting together a proactive, multi-year plan to try to fix the water situation here locally,” Cullars says. “I very much appreciate city officials coming out and speaking with us today.”
The city says they're looking into bonds, or loans to pay for their plans.
They'll be having a work session at the City Annex building at 10 a.m. Thursday.
They'll be going into more detail of their plans and answering more questions from the public.