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The City of Milledgeville is facing a water crisis due to a motor failure with a high-service pump at the city’s water treatment facility.
On Monday, the city of Milledgeville released a water conservation advisory asking residents to conserve their water in expectation of water-pressure loss and having no access to water. Residents were specifically asked to use no outside water and asked to conserve water indoors by condensing loads of laundry, reducing shower times, turning the water off when brushing teeth or shaving, ensuring all faucets are off, and keeping dishwashers full to minimize loads.
To combat this, the city began using a secondary pump capable of pumping only 75% of the daily water usage throughout the system on Monday.
As early as that afternoon, people began reporting the loss of water to their homes, businesses and entire neighborhoods.
In response, the Baldwin County School System also closed their schools on Tuesday and reopened them on Wednesday, except for Baldwin County High School, and canceled all after-school programs. Baldwin High School students also had a virtual learning day on Wednesday, instead of in-person attendance.
“There is really no way to determine areas that will be without water because this outage is not caused by delivery infrastructure failure but based on the flow level being pumped from the plant,” Tuesday update on Milledgeville’s Facebook page states.
Also on Tuesday, a separate Facebook post stated the water system continues to operate on the flow provided by the secondary pump. Conservation efforts were reported to be helpful, but the secondary pump is not able able to produce what is required for daily usage and tank levels continued to decrease to a lower level than Monday’s levels.
Water system contractors returned Wednesday morning to increase the efficiency of the operating pump. At the time of The Baldwin Bulletin’s deadline, it was anticipated a portable pump would be installed and running later in the week, though a full-restoration-time had not been announced.
With no reported restoration time, the city of Milledgeville and Baldwin County set up a drinkable water distribution center and non-drinkable water stations for Wednesday and Thursday. Drinkable water was distributed at the Baldwin County Government Annex, while non-potable water could be filled in personal containers at several city and county fire stations.
As of wdeadline, updates were still to come but will be shared on the city’s website (milledgevillega. us) and Facebook page.