So I’m driving around town this morning hoping for a visit from the photography muse, when I find myself on Milledge Terrace, the street that parallels Lumpkin behind Earth Fare. It’s a narrow street, as streets go, and I find my side of the street blocked by two white trucks. I wait for an opening and pull around the trucks. It’s then that I spot a guy standing beside a hydrant maybe thirty yards ahead of me. And the hydrant is wide open. Water is exploding from it onto the street, then doing a scale-model-of-the-Oconee-at-flood-stage thing down to Milledge Avenue, where (as I discover later) it hangs a left and disappears into a storm drain. What gives? Why would anyone want to turn loose so much water when there’s no fire and there are no kids in swimsuits anywhere in the vicinity and the memory of our 100-year drought is still so fresh?
It turns out that Ben Weiss and his ACC public works team are making sure that our drinking water is clear, not brown. Mineral deposits build up in the water lines. The deposits gradually change the water from clear to brown. Ben and his guys open the hydrants to flush the mineral deposits. When the water gushing from a hydrant turns clear, the guys close that hydrant and move on to the next one. They’ll be traveling all over the county in the coming days and months.
So the next time you enjoy some cool, clear county water, you might drink a toast to Ben and the guys, and if the water is not as clear as it should be, just give Ben a call.
