LaFayette City Lake temporarily closed

Published 1:00 pm Thursday, May 12, 2022

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At the LaFayette City Council meeting on Monday, Anne Gleaton, superintendent of the city water plant, gave an update on the LaFayette City Lake being temporarily closed due to due to raw water flow issues at the water treatment pump house at the lake.

“Basically, what happened is there’s something conflicting [with] the flow coming in, and we thought maybe it was the screens, so we went out and cleaned the screens,” Gleaton said. “And that wasn’t the problem, so there’s something in the pipe. So I’ve had to rent a pump to help with the flow coming in because we were getting a lot of air.”

Gleaton said the water plant had to close lake so no one would damage the temporary pump or be hurt by it. She said the pump was located on the boat ramp, so visitors couldn’t get their boats into the lake, anyway.

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“Since we’ve been using that pump, the air has stopped,” she said. “Everything’s good, and I’m just waiting on a quote to get someone to come in and run a camera in that pipe to see if we can find out what’s going on with it.”

Gleaton said she didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the pipe because the city water plant is about to get a new one.

“I’m trying to get something done that’ll just get us by until then,” she said.

Gleaton said the water plant will let everyone know when the lake is open again.

In other business at the meeting, the council discussed rescheduling a council meeting set for May 23. Vines said it was because that day was the same as LaFayette High School’s graduation ceremony. The council decided to move the council meeting to Tuesday, May 24 at 5:30 p.m.

Councilmember Terry Mangram brought up Chambers County School District’s consolidation plan that would eliminate LaFayette High School.

“We would like to have the high school here in LaFayette,” he said. “We would love to have it here … And we would like to make a strong fight to have that school here in LaFayette. It’s a thing that we really need to do. So I’m saying to the citizens of LaFayette, please stay focused. Council, please stay focused. And let’s do whatever we can do as a council and as individual citizens to push and let the people know that we are in this to have the school in LaFayette.”

In other business, LaFayette Mayor Kenneth Vines announced that there would be a work session on Wednesday, May 18 at noon, during which the mayor and council would talk about code enforcement, business licenses, the city’s website, bookkeeping and a senior citizen building.