When meeting Tuesday, Nov. 30, the Ellijay-Gilmer County Water and Sewerage Authority board approved steps toward an upcoming project that will further extend the water system in the Roundtop Road area.
Water board members Mike Gibbs, Hubert Parker, Tony Whitaker and Don Callihan approved engineering expenses and the purchase of pipe for the project.
The extension will be funded with money from the American Rescue Plan received by the county government, which has agreed to allot some of that funding to the project, noted Gary McVey, water authority director. Gilmer County has indicated those funds will be available in 2022, he added.
The 5-mile extension is expected to run along Roundtop Road — where a water system extension that also included the Sunlight Road area recently wrapped — to the Gilmer/Pickens County line. The water authority expects to use in-house labor for the project, McVey said.
When discussing a proposed pipe purchase needed for the extension, McVey told board members that ductile iron pipe is still tough to get, and at a good price, due to supply chain issues.
He said the price of the pipe has gone up particularly in recent months. From 2010 to spring of 2021, the price per foot went from approximately $11 to $15, but, in the last few months, it increased an additional $6 per foot, he noted.
“It’s concerning,” McVey said. “(After) speaking with vendors, I’m starting to get concerned on some of the prices we’re seeing for our pipe. We’ve got 5,000 feet on hand (and) need another 22,000 to complete the project.”
Gibbs, the water board’s chairman, suggested adding an additional 8,000 feet of pipe to the purchase while it’s still available for $21.20 a foot.
That request was approved for a total of 30,000 linear feet of 8-inch ductile iron pipe to be purchased for $636,000.
Each vendor who submitted pricing said it would likely be several weeks, possibly as far out as April, before all the pipe can be delivered, McVey noted. There shouldn’t be any trouble getting some of the other equipment for the Roundtop project, such as fire hydrants, he added.
“There will be fire hydrants and valves at major intersections, future valves for places where there’s a major road we might want to go down one day,” McVey said.
A cost of $17,500 for Turnipseed Engineering to do the line extension engineering work was also approved at the meeting.