Water is flowing in the Town of Alto, but only barely.
On December 28, Alto Mayor PJ Huggins issued an Emergency Administrative Order to cut-off water to commercial and industrial customers in an effort to conserve supplies for the town’s approximately 1,200 residential customers. Town Clerk Penny Rogers says the mayor contacted all of the commercial and industrial customers and explained the dire situation the water system was in, and asked for their cooperation.
Although the order stated that “no potable water would be provided by the Alto Water Distribution System to major commercial and industrial customers” until the system recovered to normal levels, the order also stated that water could be “restricted” to those customers, and that is what is now in effect. Commercial and industrial customers are only restricted at this time, allowing operations to continue at businesses such as Hodie Meats. The new meat processing plant is located in the Phoenix Alto Industrial complex, formerly Mt. Vernon Mills, where two major water leaks occurred over the Christmas holiday. According to Rogers, the leaks began sometime on Christmas Day and worsened overnight into Monday when the leaks were discovered. By that point, the town was nearly out of water.
Alto allowed Hodie Meats to run their water for two hours on Thursday, December 29, so the company could fill its onsite tanks and maintain operations. Other impacted commercial properties at the Phoenix Alto Industrial complex include Steel Cell and Tencate. The water restrictions are also affecting Lumite and Smyrna Ready Mix, says Rogers. She adds that the emergency order does not affect Dollar General and Alto Grocery because their operations use very little water.
Mayor Huggins spent Thursday inspecting water lines with utility crews, staffers said, so she was unavailable for comment. However, Alto Public Works/Water Supervisor Gary Kimbral says the town’s water supply is “recovering, but slowly.”
More time needed to recover
Besides the two major commercial leaks, Kimbral says numerous residential leaks have been reported throughout Alto. Those leaks are being addressed by the property owners at this time. The town has seven wells online that Kimbral says are producing “just fine.” However, with the amount of water that’s been lost, he says it will take a little more time for the system to recover fully.
Alto uses elevated tanks to store its potable (drinking) water. Collectively, they can store up to 450,000 gallons. The town also has an interconnect with Banks County on County Line Road just south of Lee Arrendale State Prison and an interconnect with Demorest. Even with those interconnects, Alto is still struggling to recover as quickly as officials would like. Currently, Banks County cannot pump water to the Alto interconnect because of a water line break in its system that feeds the County Line Road tank. Banks County is working to resolve that issue as quickly as possible Kimbral says. The Demorest interconnect is operational, but because of leaks in the Demorest system, Alto can only receive limited amounts of water at a time from Demorest.
Due to the diminished water supplies, Mayor Huggins declared a public health and safety state of emergency under which her emergency order was issued. And even though the town is slowly recovering from a serious situation, officials acknowledge it could have been worse. Fortunately, the town did not suffer any water main breaks during the brutally cold weather, according to Kimbral.
Along with steps taken to curb water supplies to commercial properties, Alto leaders are encouraging residents to do their part. They’re asking residential customers to continue conserving water until Alto’s water tanks are back up to normal operating levels and the state of emergency is lifted.
