PERRY, Ga. — The City of Perry has been awarded top honors for its water. Now, they’re putting more than $4 million into upgrades to water and sewer infrastructure.
Blake Kemp and his family have lived in Perry's New Haven subdivision for two years now. He says everything is good, except one thing.
"Frequently, we will have orange water, we will have kind of a rust-looking color. Most of the time, though, there will just be water outages, a lot of water main breaks," he said.
The New Haven and Stonebridge subdivisions have seen problems with city water and people say they don't know exactly where those problems are coming from.
"We're also being told that there's going to be more development later on in Perry, and it could be that and there are just not enough pipes for the amount of houses. I’m not quite sure honestly,” the homeowner said.
City leaders say Perry is growing toward the east and the south, and now, they have million-dollar plans for utility infrastructure to sustain that growth.
"With the $4.93 million we're going to be getting with them, we plan on doing some significant water improvements west of I-75 to make sure were able to provide water service to that portion of the city,” Perry’s assistant city manager said.
Assistant city manager Robert Smith says they’re partnering with Perry Public Facilities Authority to provide utilities to subdivisions and new developments through a new wastewater plant.
"All of the wastewater from the south service area and the east service area will flow into that new facility and we'll be able to adequately serve those areas and also take some wastewater load off our existing area that’s served by the Frank Satterfield wastewater facility,” Smith explained.
For those who live in those subdivisions seeing water problems like Kemp, the city has a message.
"While, yes, we are growing significantly as a city and we’re making a lot of improvements in the growing parts of town, we are never going to neglect the existing customers in the core of our town," Smith said.
Smith says the creating the wastewater facility and providing utilities to the east and south areas will take 10 to 20 years to complete, being able to meet the needs of Perry’s projected population growth of double what it is now.