If early talks about the expiration of a 20-year deal struck in 2007 are any indication, service areas for the Eatonton-Putnam Water and Sewer Authority (EPWSA) and the private Piedmont Water Co. will basically remain the same as they are now.
EPWSA would provide water service to Eatonton and the Lake Sinclair area in the southern and western parts of the county, plus waste treatment service to Eatonton customers. Piedmont would provide water and some sewer service in the Lake Oconee basin, extending westward across northern Putnam in the Harmony Road area to U.S. 441.
The current arrangement of service areas is “just common sense,” said Putnam Commission Chairman (and this year’s EPWSA chair) Bill Sharp, who cited an unexplained $100 million price tag for EPWSA to openly compete with Piedmont in the Lake Oconee area.
“In no way has it been adversarial,” EPWSA board member Judd Doster said at EPWSA’s monthly board meeting last week.
“It has been really productive,” ESG project manager Brice Doolittle added.
Earlier, there had been some speculation that EPWSA might look at extending its lines out toward Lake Oconee’s hinterlands via Pea Ridge Road, Sparta Highway (Ga. 15), or Greensboro Highway (Ga. 44), a gray area idea that remains a possibility.
Representatives from the Putnam County Commission, the EPWSA board, and Piedmont Water have already held two meetings and EPWSA staff has been told to set up a work session for the full EPWSA board.
When the service area agreement was struck 16 years ago, EPWSA and the joint Putnam-Baldwin Sinclair Water Authority were just beginning operations, and Piedmont had been consolidating lakeside community wells into a continuous system for about a decade.
Both systems encountered some problems in the early going.
The set-up of the Sinclair Water Authority split the cost of producing water at its Cay Drive facility on a 50:50 basis, guaranteeing Putnam the availability of water for growth in the long haul but straining monthly bills for its customers. Basically, EPWSA needed more customers.
Meanwhile, Piedmont’s dependence on developers’ community wells and sometimes small bore distribution lines brought complaints about both water quality and pressure. The core of Piedmont’s operations in Putnam centers on the commercial areas around Harmony Crossing, and its main distribution lines there have adequate pressure and volume.
It is at the far ends of the system where hiccups seem to rise. A decade ago, Piedmont built a large tank on Marshall Road west of Sugar Creek, but the water quality there reportedly caused damage to Putnam County High School’s air conditioning system and did not meet the needs of the nearby Rock Eagle Industrial Park. The Long Shoals area near the Lake Oconee dam also has reported problems.
Alan Foster, Putnam’s commissioner for District 3, which clusters around Lake Oconee, has said the Piedmont system has 38 such wells.
“About a third of them are just fine,” he said. “Another third is okay, but the last third is trouble.”
In short, Piedmont needs water, quality water.
Since the mid-2010s, both systems have found some solutions to their immediate problems by turning to each other.
In response to the high school and industrial park problems, the Putnam County government (not EPWSA) built a connecting line out Lower Harmony Road and Bethel Church Road to supply the school and park. In the process, the county/EPWSA line connected with the Piedmont line.
Today, EPWSA sells water (at wholesale) to Piedmont – easily EPWSA’s largest customer (by volume) with 921,000 gallons purchased in May alone. In turn, the water sales offset EPWSA’s differential from purchases from the Sinclair Water Authority, which keeps customers’ bills lower than they would otherwise be.
The situation is not static, however. Piedmont has recently completed its own water production plant on the Greene County side of the lake but getting part of its 3-million-gallons-a-day capacity across the lake to its Putnam customers still reportedly depends on a Department of Transportation permit to hang a pipe under its new bridge – whenever that comes. Piedmont is set to begin filling the Marshall Road tank again next week.
Meanwhile, EPWSA has set extension lines up the west side of U.S. 441 in motion and is gradually adding service subscribers, averaging 14 new customers per month over the past five months.