WATER WOES: City still searching for "main system failure"

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Water service gradually was restored to many customers on the north side of Milledgeville on Tuesday, as city crews repaired numerous smaller sections of busted pipes within its infrastructure.

However, the City still hasn't been able to identify "the main system failure," and many people still remain without water, City Manager Hank Griffeth reported to Baldwin2k News on Tuesday evening.

"We continue to have repairs to make and anticipate we will find other failures, which need repairing before this event is over," Griffeth wrote Thursday night. "These repairs, as well as continued isolation of a section of the water system, has allowed the system to continue to pressurize today, as tanks continued to fill."

At this point, this is officially the most significant water service disruption around Milledgeville and Baldwin County in many years. Hundreds of residences were left without water on Monday. WMAZ/Channel 13 was in town on Tuesday and interviewed a man who's lived in Milledgeville for 40 years and said that "this is the longest I've ever gone without having water." WMAZ's entire story can be watched immediately below...

Even where water service was restored on Tuesday – including much of Carrington Woods and Dunlap Road and many of the neighborhoods off of Log Cabin Road –  the water pressure was hit-and-miss, according to commenters on Baldwin2k's Facebook page.

Griffeth explained this further.

"Many customers will find they have some water, but it will take a few more days for the system to recover and full restoration to be reached. With this being the case, please continue to conserve water for the next few days as the system continues to recover," he wrote.

With this in mind, the City on Tuesday afternoon issued a "boiled water advisory for the following locations: all of the area of the city’s system north of MLK, Jr. Drive, as well as the area west of the Highway 441 Bypass. Any City of Milledgeville water system customer who has been without water since approximately 4:00 AM on December 26, 2022; this notice applies to your water," according to a press release.

The problem isn't exclusive to Milledgeville. Feedback on Baldwin2k's Facebook page included a man who said that his house on Ga. 212 hasn't had running water since Sunday, while a lady on Ga. 49 said that her home also was without running water, as of Tuesday evening. 

Nor is the problem exclusive to Milledgeville and Baldwin County. Roughly a half-dozen counties in metro Atlanta remained under a boil water advisory on Tuesday, while numerous other counties across the state were dealing with infrastructure problems, all brought about by frozen pipes underneath people's homes that froze and busted during the cold front over the weekend. 

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City firefighters and county firefighters got to work handing out cases of bottled water on Tuesday. They'll be back at it Wednesday, between 10 a.m.-6 p.m. The locations are:

• Carrington Woods government annex (North Columbia Street)

•  City Hall annex (next to City Hall)