Jones County schools remain closed Tuesday as Gray water disruption continues

Gray has no firm timeline for resolving the water issue. Dairy Queen and Slim Chickens remain closed, while employees are getting hours through deep cleaning.

GRAY, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) — Jones County Schools will remain closed Tuesday after a water main break on Sunday led to a boil water advisory.

The district made the announcement Monday afternoon. Schools were also closed on Monday.

“Our facilities team remains in close contact with the City of Gray,” an update Monday said. “While our goal is always to have students in school, reliable water service is necessary to operate safely.”

Several local businesses are also shut down as crews work to restore water service.  

41NBC spoke with Dairy Queen owner Justin Kelly Monday about how the water issue is impacting employees, customers and businesses.   

“So yesterday during the Sunday after church rush that we have, we found out that there was a water main break,” he said. “But it didn’t really affect either of our restaurants on this side of Gray, so we just kept operating. But yesterday around 6 p.m. we got word from the local health department that it was time to close because we were going under a water boil advisory.”

Kelly says his other restaurant, Slim Chickens, is also closed, but employees are still being allowed to work and earn money during the outage. 

“We had to close both of our restaurants at 6, and we’ve been closed ever since,” he said. “This morning we let the morning crew come in and do a lot of deep cleaning. We’re getting a lot of things done you can’t do during normal operating hours. Just trying to make the best of it, because they are grown adults that need to earn a full week worth of hours for their families and take-home money.”

Kelly says he’s watching the situation closely so he can reopen his restaurants as soon as possible.  

“We’ve got buses at every one of our entrances to let everybody know we’re closed,” he said. “I want them to know as soon as the green light is given, we will open all our restaurants, and we will be at full operating capacity, no limitations. We’re just ready to start serving food, and do what we do best.”

In a Facebook update Monday afternoon, the Jones County Water Department said it was working with the City of Gray Water Department and the Georgia Rural Water Association to identify the cause of the city’s system-wide outage. There was still no estimated time for water restoration.

The city and county operate separate water systems. The county department said it is continuously supplying water to Gray to help with the outage, which could cause slight pressure fluctuations for county water customers.

The department also apologized to its customers along Highway 11 and said crews were working to restore normal service.

Addressing questions about data centers, the department said that, to its knowledge, there are currently no data centers in Jones County and they are not the cause of the outage.

According to a separate post Sunday by the Gray Fire Department, city crews have been working since 6 a.m. Sunday.

Both city and county water customers are being asked to conserve water. The City of Gray’s boil water advisory remains in effect until it is officially lifted.