Plans afoot to link city and county water systems

The city, said Klerk, would like a backup supplier in the event that something happens at its water plant. The authority also seeks redundancy in case the Bear Creek water plant goes down, which it has done on more than one occasion, although for manageable lengths of time.

Commerce and the authority are already connected on Wheeler Cemetery Road, but the volume of water is limited to 350,000 gallons per day moving either way. The proposed connection would enable either entity to sell at least one million gallons per day to the other.

“If something was to happen to their water treatment plant, they’d be in trouble,” Klerk noted.

He also outlined other benefits to the authority, the chief among them being that the connection would greatly reduce the amount of line flushing required in East Jackson south of Waterworks Road. According to Klerk, the authority actually flushes more water than it sells in the areas of Hoods Mill Road, Waterworks Road, Ridge Mill Manor and East Jackson Comprehensive High School. So far this year, the authority has billed 113 customers in the area for 7.3 million gallons of water and has flushed 10.5 million gallons to maintain chlorine levels. With a connection on Hwy. 334, Klerk said the authority would periodically run the pump station, using about 1 million gallons a month, to more easily maintain chlorine residuals.

Klerk also said the project would mean that the authority could drop its long-range plan to extend a line across the North Oconee River and along Sheep Pasture Road to connect with Commerce on Waterworks Road.
Funding for the work would come from leftover 2005 SPLOST funds, estimated to be about $1.16 million.

The cost of the line extension is estimated at about $360,000. There is no cost estimate yet on the pump station.

Engineering is already under way to extend a dead-end line on Whitehill School Road across U.S. 441, under the Norfolk Southern Rail line, out Harris Lord Cemetery Road to Swan Road. The proposed extension would run up Bolton-Gordon Road to Hwy. 334 and then west to the Commerce end point. A "high-ball" estimate for the original project came in at $421,000, a figure the authority thinks will actually be considerably lower once the bids come in.
Adding the 6,100 feet of the new proposal to 8,000 feet of line in the original could result in lower unit prices, Klerk speculated.

In a related matter, Klerk advised the authority that he's contracted with Omega Mapping Service to use its ground-penetrating radar to try to locate casings that the authority supposedly bored under the railroad years ago. Preliminary efforts to find the casing were unsuccessful, leading Klerk to speculate that the bore was never completed, even though the authority paid Norfolk Southern for a bore permit.
The cost of that work will be less than $1,000, he said.