Three days and nights of sub-freezing temperatures over Christmas weekend brought burst water pipes and frozen well pumps to households all across Putnam County with the thaw that began Monday afternoon.
The Eatonton-Putnam Water and Sewer Authority’s (EPWSA’s) distribution lines suffered no broken mains, but the accumulated drips and spewings on individual properties did affect EPWSA by draining its central 500,000gallon tank on Dennis Station Road faster than it could be refilled.
As of early Tuesday afternoon, the four smaller tanks inside the city were able to supply water to Eatonton customers, but Pea Ridge Road and Twin Bridges Road areas remained without water service.
These latter two areas were expected to be back in service sometime Tuesday afternoon, according to EPWSA manager Brice Doolittle.
In the meantime, EPWSA crews spent Monday evening and much of Tuesday scouring the countryside, performing “non-routine” meter readings on individual lines. If the meter at an unoccupied house (read: weekenders) indicated activity, the meters were shut off.
]“We’re finding quite a few,” Doolittle said, adding that a texting system was being used to notify property owners of their problem.
Putnam’s situation apparently was not unique. Monday’s news reports revealed serious breakages in nearby Bibb and Baldwin counties. A multi-story apartment building in Macon’s Vineville area also had multiple burst pipes as they began to thaw Monday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Milledgeville and Baldwin water system workers knew they had a large leak somewhere, so they were sent out scouring roadsides and creek bottoms for exposed—possibly burst—water lines. In Jones County, the city of Gray posted a boiled water advisory.
That is not to say that EPWSA has not had its own recent problems with leaks and breaks in its big lines. At around 2 p.m. Friday, two weeks ago, a massive leak burst through one of two major lines leading out of the Sinclair Water Authority’s water treatment plant on Cay Drive.
One of the two redundant lines feeds Putnam and EPWSA’s 5,000-plus customers. The other feeds the Baldwin County system. Both run parallel to each other as they head toward Milledgeville highway and the general vicinity of Lakeside Baptist Church. Workers from both counties responded, not knowing which line had crashed.
It turned out the gushing leak came in the Putnam main line, which leads to the central 500,000-gallon tank on Dennis Station Road. That tank in turn feeds lines to each of EPWSA’s Sinclair customers and to Eatonton’s four tanks.
“A plug in a 90-degree bend blew out,” Doolittle explained. “And I am grateful for intergovernmental aid agreements. It was nice having Baldwin’s crew there, too.”
Repairs were completed within five hours, by 7 p.m. – a feat publicly praised by Putnam County Commissioner Jeff Wooten at the next week’s commission meeting. But the situation was not without its tricky moments.
“We had a calculated balancing act going on there for a while,” Doolittle said.
For the repair work, the valve from the treatment plant line had to be closed, which meant no water was being pumped to the Dennis Station tank. Customers in the Sinclair area and in Eatonton probably never noticed the difference, but the Dennis Station Road tank was at least half-drained in those five hours.
Yet another large break occurred shortly afterward near where Industrial Boulevard crosses the railroad track next to Oak Street. It too was quickly repaired, though some Eatonton customers did experience “brown water” for a day or so.
EPWSA recommends that all customers in the Pea Ridge and Twin Bridges roads service area, when their water is turned back on, should boil their water before consumption.