ELLAVILLE — Schley County’s water department has been defaulting on a loan made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for three months, and it looks like the department won’t be able to make payments for the next several months.

The County built the water system as it currently stands because of a survey taken by Schley County and the Chamber of Commerce in 2000, which showed that 75 percent of the county’s citizens would be interested in purchasing water through the County instead of relying on wells. The County then hired Carter & Sloope, consulting engineers, who advised the County on how to build the system. Carter & Sloope reduced that number to 50 percent, and built the water system based on that percentage.

Now that the system’s up and running, though, there are only about 365 people using the water system, and the County’s just not receiving the revenue it had expected. Once construction’s finished on Schley County’s roads, the County’s expecting 25 more people to connect into the water system, but that’s not going to be much in paying off the loan.

The monthly bill they’re expected to pay is $25,582, so they’re currently behind $76,746.

The County’s only bringing in between $14,000 and $15,000 from water bills, which has been going to pay a loan that was doled out for phase one of the water system, which covers Ellaville. The County’s never gotten behind on phase one’s bill.

But, there are 877 taps that are not being used right now by residents who opted not to be tapped into the system, but are still using wells.

“It’s insurance,” Greg Barineau, Schley County Board of Commissioners chairman, said at a meeting Tuesday. “A lot of us did it, including me.”

Barineau explained if his well ever went dry or broke, he’d have a back-up water supply.

The County typically charges between $650 and $700 to tap into a water system, but the County gave its residents a discount on taps when the water system went online.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Barineau invited representatives from the USDA, Georgia’s U.S. congressmen and Schley County citizens to pow wow about ideas on how to pay its loan.

A member of the Georgia Rural Community Assistance Program is making a list of suggestions made at Tuesday’s meeting; Schley County will hold another meeting to nail down its plan.

Among the suggestions were:

• Increasing the current residents’ water bills

• Getting a marketing campaign together to gather together more residents to buy the County’s water

• Comparing the quality of well water and County water (the County has a filter)

• Refinancing the current loan to a lower percentage rate

• Defaulting completely on the second loan and having someone else take the system over until it’s necessary for more citizens to be on the water system in the future, and then purchasing it back.