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The Yatesville City Council unanimously approved a contract for $80,718.50 for water lines to be tied in on Yatesville Barnesville Road and the installation of four new fire hydrants. The action came at their June 11 meeting.

The funds are remaining from the city’s portion of the 2005 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST).

Mayor Cecil Moncrief said the contract with Turner Construction includes four new fire hydrants. Three may be installed on Yatesville Barnesville Road and one on Ragland Road, or there may be two hydrants on each road. He added that the hydrants have long been needed.

“It’s like buying a fire truck – you buy it and hope you never need it, but sooner or later you will,” said the mayor. “We’ve been here for 40 years and not one fire hydrant on that street. If we had a house fire up there, we’d have to shuffle water back and forth, because we go to the closest hydrant. But it is still time consuming.

“ Most of those people up there are on two-inch water lines,” he added, “so we’ll be going to a six-inch water line.”

Any areas disturbed during the work will be restored, and trench rock will be blasted and removed as necessary.

In addition to the water line work on Yatesville Barnesville Road, Turner will also be extending water lines out Johnson Road as far as the remaining funds of SPLOST take them. The city has $32,658 that has been designated to be spent on water lines for Johnson Road.

“We’ll go as far as we can go, or until the SPLOST funding runs out,” Moncrief said. “We’ll do some more later one.”

In other business, Moncrief noted that for the first time in several years, the city had one of its six-inch mains break on June 3.

“I know for a fact that it was leaking around 1:30 a.m. I found that out Sunday morning,” said Moncrief. “When I went in Saturday evening, there was no water leak, so sometime between 5:30 p.m. Saturday and 1 a.m. Sunday that thing busted, or had been busted and finally found its way out of the ground.”

The city has an agreement with the Upson County Water Department for assistance, but Moncrief said when he called Water Department Superintendent Danny Johnson, he was told that they were short of help and couldn’t come out.

“We called Marcus South. He got some help and they came down here and dug it up. They had to go back to town and get a six-inch water clamp and put it on. Then they came back that afternoon and covered it up and made sure it didn’t leak. He did not have a six-inch coupling, but Danny Johnson did and said he would help us with whatever he could. I saw him the other day and told him I much appreciate it, because he did go get the coupling and got it to Marcus, so we did get it fixed.”

The mayor said he has asked South if he will consider looking after the city’s water system lines and breaks. South already runs several water systems.

“We have two leaks right now, one on Giles Avenue and one on Yatesville Barnesville Road,” Moncrief said. “The county was contacted about the one on Giles Avenue three weeks ago. Danny told me the other day that if we can get somebody else, just go ahead, because they are behind also.”

Moncrief said South agreed to come out on an as needed basis, and the council agreed with the mayor’s request.

“We have a list of things that need to be done – meters that need to get changed out, and some check valves,” said Moncrief. “ If we need him, we’ll call him.”