Ellijay-Gilmer County Water and Sewerage Authority board members heard updates on continuing projects headed into 2024 during a brief end-of-year meeting Dec. 18.
One project, the installation of new water line along South Main Street, will need an extension filed with its grant provider due to the water authority not being able to draw funds from a half-million dollar OneGeorgia grant until the project construction is 75 percent done.
The pipe installation work recently reached downtown Ellijay and will continue along Church and Spring Street before reaching its tie-in point on River Street sometime in 2024.
“They’ve installed 161 feet (of pipe) between Nov. 18 and Dec. 12. They’re around 30 percent complete,” Gary McVey, water authority director, told board members Billy Rowe, Hubert Parker, David Westmoreland, Tony Whitaker and Ricky Wimpey.
“The deadline (for the grant) is in March, and they’re not going to make it (to 75 percent complete). As soon as the holidays are over, we’ll be getting with the OneGeorgia people to file an extension.”
Another ongoing project, a systemwide changeout from manually read to digitally read water meters, is on hold due to supply chain issues with wiring needed for the changeouts. A little over 600 meters in two routes still need to be changed, noted McVey.
“The last word we had was that it would be mid-January before we get those wires. It’s likely going to be February before we start changing out the remaining meters,” he added.
“We’d like to have (this project) knocked out by this year, but these wires have hurt us. The meters we have changed out are on the new system and are working really well.”
Installation of new water taps that resulted from recent extension of water line in the Roundtop/Knight Road area is ongoing, and the next phase of water line extension to that part of the county will begin early next year, McVey noted.
“They’ve installed 26 taps out of 93 that have been applied for. The next phase of the project, a pipeline between Knight Road and Barnes Mountain Road, has been approved by EPD. We’ll be doing a takeoff for piping materials and bring (that project) to the board for approval in January,” he added.
Installation of new water line along Old Highway 5 heading toward the Highway 382/Sunlight Road area will also continue into the new year. Parts of that new line are already in service as the contractor, Smith Pipeline, spent part of the past month making tie-ins and installing services on the new pipeline, noted McVey.