>> CITY WATER CRISIS
Milledgeville’s mayor and city council met last week to keep the public informed about the city’s water system and its efforts to avoid another water outage crisis, such as the one that occurred the last week of April.
Numerous community stakeholders, including representatives of businesses, educational institutions and healthcare facilities attended the two-hour meeting for the opportunity to question city officials and give their input. City Manager Hank Griffeth gave the presentation for the city and fielded most of the questions.
Griffeth began the meeting by explaining what occurred to cause the crisis, echoing mostly what has been previously set forth in news accounts. He said the system’s main pump failed Monday, April 24, and a problem with one of the two back-up pumps failed to work properly. The water supply dwindled until low pressure and outages were reported the following day.
“As best we could tell, with the calls we were getting, most everyone had their water back by Thursday morning and their pressure by Thursday afternoon,” Griffeth said.
Griffeth went on to explain that the city would be using some current Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) funds for system improvements and that $5 million of the city’s $14.5 million share of the SPLOST revenue, which starts April of 2024, is earmarked for water system capital improvements. Further, he said, a pilot meter reading system has been initiated, and a system that will help detect problem areas much sooner is being put into place as well. He added that certain areas have been targeted for water main replacement with available funds.
Atrium Health Navicent Baldwin Chief Operating Officer Paul Barkley was the first from the audience to speak.He expressed that the outages have impacted operations at the hospital and that the hospital is still evaluating the impact of the April outage and its effect on care for their patients and their service to the community.
Barkley proposed a discussion of water storage to solve this issue in the future.
“The hospital would certainly welcome any conversations that would involve the opportunity to have water onsite available for storage, connected to the system so that we would be in a position in the future to be isolated if necessary or in a position to be able to be backfilled with county pressure in order to survive these types of events in the future,” Barkley said.
Barkley stated that with the assistance of the local Emergency Management Agency (EMA) and help from the company’s Macon team, no patients were forced to leave the hospital.
“But,” he added. “It puts us in a position where we can’t serve the community. I know you and your team are aware of that, but I feel it is necessary to ask for your help and see what we can do and work together. Just know that myself and our team at Atrium are willing to stand by you and work with you to make that happen.”
Milledgeville Mayor Mary Parham-Copelan stated that council members were already in conversation about some type of partnership to help solve the hospital’s problems and a letter would be sent out shortly regarding that.
Local business owner Byron Wellman, one of several members of the newly formed ‘Fix Our Water Now’ coalition, asked Griffeth what kind of timeline customers might expect in seeing significant improvements.
Griffeth said no timeline would be part of the engineer’s report that would be soon forthcoming as part of the rehab of the system’s water plant. According to Griffeth, part of the process of undertaking the renovation of the plant as well as system upgrades would be developing a working model of the system and estimated that likely could be 18-24 months away. He asked Kenny Green, with the company doing the city’s work, if that was accurate.
Green explained the various challenges to developing a working model, such as reliability of line maps, infrastructure condition, significantly increased costs, and financing.
“As far as the time, these things do take time,” Green concluded. “Just to do a water model, recommend the improvements, then design the improvements, then get a contractor to build the improvements is a multi-year thing. So, your patience is needed and appreciated.”
Baldwin County Schools Superintendent Dr. Noris Price spoke after Green and stated that the water issue occurred during the first day of testing, which was a critical time for the problem. The school system did not have water in the building but was fortunate to have a vendor who could deliver it within a 24-hour period.
“If we could have some type of collaboration for when there is a need for water, and I am talking about many, many cases of water, we could access that immediately, within a matter of hours. I think that is really important,” Price said.
District 4 County Commissioner Henry Craig was present and said the hospital and school systems are vitally important to the community. He proposed a partnership with between the city and county.
“But there are opportunities to partner with other water service in in the community, such as the county system, just like they do with fire services,” Craig said, adding that discussion is necessary. “If we allow our water experts to talk to each other and encourage them to talk to each other, we can all find solutions that will get us somewhere soon.”
Craig also stated he understood City Council Member Steve Chambers had suggested building a water tank for the hospital alone but expressed concerns that would take years to accomplish.
“I’m going to have to disagree with commissioner Craig and say I think we can get something done for the hospital a lot, lot quicker. We’ve already started looking at that, as far as a storage tank is concerned,” Chambers said.
Chamber, however, agreed that the city should meet with the county to figure out how to balance out the water systems to turn off city water and turn on county water and vice versa.
“I think that has to be done in many, many situations all around the city and possibly throughout the county,” Chambers said.
Despite the availability of water for both systems, Chambers believes the two governments are not working together as well as they should.
“I think that’s a paramount situation right now. I think if we can do some of these things, they can be done fairly quickly and at least within our distribution system. That doesn’t necessarily always help in every situation, but at least it’s a start, and one I think can be accomplished quickly,” Chambers said. “I can’t give you a timeline on that, but I can tell you it can start today.”