Hurricane Irma Strict Water & Sewer Conservation Plan Update 3 – Friday, September 15, 2017
Due to the significant power losses sustained in the area from Hurricane Irma, some customers of the Brunswick-Glynn County Joint Water & Sewer Commission continue to be under a strict water & sewer service conservation plan, except in the Exit 29/Southport area. Georgia Power has been diligently working to restore electricity to residences, businesses and critical infrastructure yet our wastewater collection system is still without power at 30% of our pumping stations as of 9:00 AM today. Local and state partners have provided much-needed resources, such as generators and fuel, and we will continue to work hard to restore sewer services system-wide.
If you have BGJWSC water service but have a septic tank, you are no longer under water restrictions. The early efforts to prevent excess strain on the water distribution system are complete. Thanks to everybody’s hard work, we didn’t have any pressure drops that would have prompted the need for a boil water advisory. Many thanks to you all for that.
If you live or have a business in the Exit 29/Southport area, all water and sewer systems are available.
If you live or have a business on St. Simons Island or Mainland Brunswick, we still have about 30% of our pumping stations offline waiting for power to be energized. Thanks in advance for your patience.
For residents and businesses on mainland Brunswick, aside from the Exit 29 area, and St. Simons Island, you are still under water and sewer restrictions in certain areas until all pumping stations have been energized and tested.
Water restrictions for those connected to our system will be in affect until an all-clear message has been posted here.
Certain customers have reached out to staff to confirm service availability. Those customers can have confidence that their service is safe to use.
I’ll also post neighborhood names at http://www.bgjwsc.org/outage since the outage map doesn’t make it that precisely clear that service is available and we want to give you confidence. Please check that page now to see if your neighborhood is listed. I’ll be updating it in real-time, so hit refresh until you see your neighborhood listed.
Those that have not communicated with us via email or Facebook can email us at outage@bgjwsc.org to confirm sewer service availability. Response time may be many hours depending on the volume. Please contact now if services are critical to public health but please wait until later in the day if services are not critical as many more sites will be up by the end of the day.
Businesses that serve food must have authorization from Department of Public Health (DPH) or Department of Agriculture (USDA) to open. DPH and USDA staff will reach out to BGJWSC staff to get confirmation of service availability. If you see a business open and serving food, that authorization has either already been given or that business may be in for a surprise when the inspector shows up today.
For those businesses that we were forced to shut down without giving advance notice, I send my personal sincere apology. This emergency measure was necessary to minimize sanitary sewer overflows. We’ll be very active in coordinating with Glynn County and City of Brunswick Police and Code Enforcement personnel to confirm your service availability and get you back in business as quickly as we can.
Have you signed up to receive our emergency notifications regarding service outages or boil water advisories? Please click here to subscribe: http://www.bgjwsc.org/subscribe-to-updates/
Our emergency updates are independent from the CodeRED system used by Glynn County. As we only have 656 subscribers in this new service at the moment, this system would have been ineffective for this event. Please subscribe now and help this become a more viable solution.
More details regarding the water and sewer restrictions are available here: http://www.bgjwsc.org/hurricane-irma-strict-water-sewer-conservation-plan-update-2-thursday-september-14-2017/
Thanks in advance for your patience and understanding.
Jay Sellers, Public Information Officer