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Hurricane Matthew Recovery Efforts Underway

Written by Jay Sellers on . Posted in General News.

The Brunswick-Glynn County Joint Water & Sewer Commission (JWSC) is a small organization of less than 150 serving a customer base of over 30,000 accounts in a community with a population over 80,000. We aim to provide the best service that we can at a price that is reasonable. There are some things that we do well and some things that we know need improving.

One of the focuses of the JWSC management team is to ensure that the systems in place to provide you service are not overwhelmed to the point where they don’t work effectively. You’ve seen that focus being developed in our recent tap fee revision and sewer connection allocation policy. We’re still striving to ensure that we can sustain the increasing growth that we’re seeing develop within the community. I believe that we’re on track for that progress.

Another of the core focuses of our team is employee development. We already have a highly skilled, highly motivated work force that strives to reliably bring sufficient quantities of safe drinking water to our customers and convey the wastewater to our three treatment plants. You will see changes in the structure of our organization in the coming months as we work to provide greater levels of service to the community. Even now, I’m proud of the dedication to the task shown by our staff. All of our first responders worked with little rest for days on end. Our Operations Analyst, Jay Sellers, has been posting photos of our staff in their native environment working hard this week to maintain services during Hurricane Matthew and to restore services to our customers once it passed. Those pictures can be viewed here: http://www.facebook.com/jaysellers

Lastly, we’re focused on increased transparency and accountability. We know our strengths and we know our weaknesses. We will improve in any way that we can. Our philosophy is one of continuous improvement – always self-examining in search of better ways to improve services and minimize costs to provide those services. We welcome your feedback and invite our customers to be present at our public commission meetings.  I also want to extend an invitation to our customers to communicate privately with me or any member of our management team on how we can serve you better.

All of our attempts to restore services following Hurricane Matthew would have been in vain without the assistance, cooperation and communication with other outstanding partner agencies in our community and across our state. This is not an all-inclusive list, so we apologize in advance if we left anybody out, but the following groups should be recognized for their response efforts. We’ve included their website address and Facebook page, where known.

Glynn County Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency –

City of Augusta Utilities – (special thanks for providing much-needed generators and a self-powered lighting station) –

Georgia Power Company –

Glynn County, including Police, Fire, EMS, 911 Center, GIS, IT and Public Works –

City of Brunswick, including Police, Fire and Public Works  –

Georgia Army & Air National Guard

U.S. Army Core of Engineers

FEMA

Georgia Emergency Management & Homeland Security Agency, especially the staff, both full-time and temporary at the State Emergency Operations Center –

National Weather Service –

National Hurricane Center

We’d also like to give special thanks to local area businesses, churches, non-governmental organizations and others that worked long hours to ensure that our first responders stayed fed throughout the incident, including Sea Island Company, Bennie’s Red Barn, Salvation Army, Copper Pig, Millhouse…I know that I’m unaware of some groups, but those come to mind immediately.

Please have confidence that our mission is to ensure public trust in our services. We are working day and night to make that happen and thank you for the gratitude that has been shown to our staff and all of our local first responders following Hurricane Matthew.

Sincerely,

Jimmy Junkin
Executive Director
On Behalf of the Board of Commissioners of the JWSC