Clayton working Hard to improve Water and Sewer Infrastructure

The City of Clayton is working hard to improve its aging water and sewer infrastructure, says Mayor Kurt Cannon.  “There are just a lot of issues out there that have not been addressed the way they should have been over the last 60-70 years.  Since I have come into office, we’ve tried to aggressively go after and prioritize which ones we are going after first with what money we can get.  We had a little bit of money in there and we quickly went after those projects and got them done.  We’ve had lots of kind of slowdowns in those projects because of material accessibility but we are starting to get materials.  We’ve replaced several lines within the City.  Several were kind of dangerous lines where like the Clayton Baptist Church didn’t have a line big enough to support its fire suppression system or a hydrant right there close to the church, which is a danger for a large gathering place.  Those were fixed quickly and first.  We went after several other grants.  We’ve got several big lines ready to be replaced.  We are applying for more grants now and are pretty sure we’ll get some of those to do more lines but there have been several lines totally replaced within the City in the last year.  Also, on the sewer side, we’ve replaced several lines and we have another big project that we are already bidding out and getting ready to move forward on that will pretty much cover the whole west side of town and have a totally new infrastructure for sewer.  So, we are moving forward with a lot of really good projects that will help the sewer side and help slow the infiltration of water into that system.  In fact, we have already identified several of those issues and repaired them in preparation for this bigger project.  And then we’ve also replaced several valves downtown to help us better isolate issues and repair them at any time without shutting down a larger area.  So, we are making a lot of progress.”  Mayor Cannon is also proud of improvements made in the relationship with the Rabun County Water and Sewer Authority.  “The other progress that I’m really happy about is we have been really working well with the Rabun County Water and Sewer Authority in meeting with them regularly.  We’ve even put into place a newer thing where some of the folks on the ground will be meeting together with the Authority folks that are on the ground every other week just to talk about issues and how we’re working together and making sure that we are doing that more seamlessly as we move forward in the future and figure out how to kind of bring our systems together and do a much better job for the people of the community.  There has been a lot of talk over the years about consolidation.  I’ve been one of those proponents for years but how we do that to get the best out of the system for the community is really important and we don’t want to just jump into that lightly.  We want to make sure that we do it in a way that best serves every single citizen in the City or outside the City.  We just want to take care of everybody out there the best way we can and not waste any money in the process.”  As City crews work to repair or replace water and sewer lines, boil water advisories may be issued.  This will be a temporary inconvenience as the water and sewer infrastructure is being improved in the area.