Long County and Hinesville partnering on new water well

Published: Dec. 7, 2022 at 4:07 PM EST|Updated: Dec. 7, 2022 at 5:45 PM EST

HINESVILLE, Ga. (WTOC) - The City of Hinesville and Long County are teaming up to get water to their citizens.

They made an agreement to create a new water well in Long County, with both areas getting to use it.

Hinesville city leaders say the agreement will help them address the rapidly growing development in both Long County and Hinesville. City Manager Kenneth Howard calls the agreement a win-win for both areas.

“The City of Hinesville has experienced exponential growth over the last several years. After being appointed as city manager, I quickly realized that we were getting requests for water and sewer services frequently,” Howard said.

Too frequent, the city says, to be sustainable on the water capacity currently available to them.

“We had limited capacity, and within the next four to five years, we’d exceed that capacity.”

Based on current estimations, this agreement would help expand capacity in Hinesville by 1.5 million more gallons to properly plan for growth over the next 10- 20 years.

“We could not increase our water withdrawal permit capacity, because there’s a restriction on that. So, we had to look at alternative ways.”

Howard says they’ve worked for about a year compiling all the information in this engineering report regarding the water systems in this engineering report regarding the water systems in Long County and the city of Hinesville. This information will be submitted to the state’s environmental protection division to receive the necessary permits to start construction.

As a part of the agreement, Hinesville will pay Long County $500,000 to contribute to developing the county’s water system. Then, the construction costs will be split evenly between the two, and the well will be jointly owned by both entities, but operated by the city.

“Long County has limited facilities right now. We’ve spoken to them about assisting with their needs as well. This is a win-win situation for us.”

The city plans to use the current water and sewer fund, combined with leftover COVID relief funding to pay for the project – with the potential for taking out a loan.

Howard says they plan to submit all of their information to the state in the coming weeks. They hope to have an approval back by early next year. Construction would take about 8-10 months after that.