Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia
What a Savannah Plumber Should Know While the City Changes Its Water Source
Almost every plumbing article ever written treats the water supply as the fixed background and the pipes as the thing that changes. Savannah is running that the other way round at the moment. The city states that it is fortunate to have two outstanding drinking water sources, the Floridan Aquifer and the Savannah River, and then says, in the present tense, that it is moving toward the Savannah River as its primary source.
That is not a rumour or a plan on a shelf. It has a state funding package behind it with dates and figures attached, and it is worth a householder knowing about, because the water that meets your pipes is one half of every corrosion question there is. What we will not do on this page is tell you what that change does to your plumbing, because no source we read publishes a comparison, and we would rather say so than guess.
The Money and the Dates
A $146 Million Share of a Coastal Georgia Water Partnership
The State of Georgia General Assembly approved funding in the FY25 midyear budget for the creation of a new Coastal Georgia Regional Water Partnership, a collaboration between municipal utility providers including the City of Savannah, Bryan County and Effingham County, aimed at strengthening the region water supply infrastructure. The allocation is $501.7 million, distributed through the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority by way of state direct investments and zero interest loans.
| What was decided | Figure or date |
|---|---|
| Total regional allocation | $501.7 million |
| The budget it sat inside | The $40.5 billion FY25 midyear budget |
| Passed | March 3, 2025 |
| Signed into law | March 6, 2025 |
| The City of Savannah share | $146 million |
| What that share funds | Expansion of the I and D plant, raw water pumping system enhancements, water transmission pump station upgrades, and the construction of two new water towers |
| Stated purpose beyond capacity | To establish water supply system redundancy across the region |
Two of those items matter to a household more than the headline does. Water transmission pump station upgrades and two new water towers are both about pressure and storage rather than volume, and storage is what keeps a system steady when demand spikes or a main fails. A city building towers is telling you something about how it intends the network to behave on a bad day.
The Honest Part
What We Will Not Tell You About the Source Change
Here is where a lot of local plumbing writing goes wrong, and we are going to stop short of it deliberately. Aquifer water and river water are different waters, and the way water behaves against copper, brass and old solder depends on the water. That is general chemistry, and it is true everywhere. What it does not license anybody to do is claim that Savannah water has become more or less corrosive, because no page we read publishes a before and after figure for hardness, pH, alkalinity or anything else.
What the city does state, on its own service line inventory page, is that Savannah drinking water meets all United States Environmental Protection Agency and Georgia Environmental Protection Division standards, that it does not contain lead when it leaves the well or the treatment plant, and that the risk for lead to enter water comes from corrosion of plumbing materials made with lead. It names those materials: pipes buried in the ground, home plumbing, solder and fixtures.
Put those two published statements next to each other and the useful household conclusion is a question rather than an answer. If your exposure to lead is a function of your own pipework meeting the water, then during a period when the utility is changing which water that is, the sensible thing is to read the notices your utility sends and to look your own address up on the inventory. That inference is ours. It is a reason to check, not a reason to worry.
Look Yourself Up
The Water Service Line Inventory and What It Cannot Tell You
The city publishes a Water Service Line Inventory and invites customers to check its records for the water service line at their own property. If you cannot find your address in the inventory map, it asks you to email Savannah Water Resources rather than assume anything from the gap. That is the right instruction, because an address missing from an inventory is an unknown rather than a clear result.
The limit of that tool is worth stating plainly. A service line inventory records the buried pipe between the main and the property. It does not record the solder at the joints inside your walls, the brass in a pre 2014 fitting, or the fixtures. The city itself lists home plumbing, solder and fixtures alongside buried pipes as places lead can be, so a clean inventory result is good news about one component and silence about three others.
Numbers a Household Can Use
What Savannah Says Things Cost in Gallons
The city publishes a page on the common causes of a high water bill and it is unusually generous with figures. It starts by removing the most common false alarm: consumption is simply higher in summer. Each Savannah resident uses an average of 85 gallons of water a day in winter, and that usage rate jumps to 125 gallons a day in summer. A July bill above a January bill is not by itself evidence of a fault.
A running toilet
Up to 200 gallons a day, and the city says it can double a family typical water use and bill. It calls this one of the most common household leaks.
A leaky faucet
As much as 20 gallons of water per day depending on severity. Check each faucet individually, including under sinks and at outside spigots.
A sprinkler on a hose
About 1,020 gallons in one hour, which at three runs a week is about 12,240 gallons a month. Not a fault at all, but it explains a bill.
An irrigation system
A stuck sprinkler valve can waste an extremely large quantity of water, and the city notes timers are often programmed to water too long and too often.
The reason to take that list seriously is the order of magnitude between the items. A dripping faucet and a running toilet feel like the same category of nuisance, and by these figures one is ten times the other. If a bill has jumped and the season does not explain it, the toilet is the first thing to test and it costs nothing to test.
The Test, Word for Word
The City Own Toilet Dye Test, and the Two Parts That Fail
This sequence is not ours. It is quoted from the city page, and we are reproducing it in order because the timing step is the one people skip.
- Take the lid off the tank
Remove the lid from the tank behind the bowl, flush the toilet, and then wait for it to fully refill before doing anything else.
- Add dye to the tank
Put a few drops of dye, or a coloured dye tablet, into the tank. Not the bowl. The whole point is to see whether tank water is reaching the bowl on its own.
- Wait at least twenty minutes
The city says at least 20 minutes, or longer if you suspect a small leak. A five minute check will clear a toilet that is quietly costing you a hundred gallons a week.
- Look in the bowl
If there is any colour in the toilet bowl, there is a leak. The city names the likely culprit as a deteriorated or defective flush valve flapper ball at the bottom of the tank that is not making a tight seal.
- Then check the second failure
The other common fault is an improperly adjusted or broken fill valve, the ballcock. Take the lid off, flush, and see whether water is draining into the overflow tubes when the tank is full.
Both faults are inexpensive parts and both are commonly misdiagnosed as the other. A flapper leak is silent and continuous; an overfilling tank runs into the overflow and often makes a faint noise. Knowing which one you have before buying anything is the difference between one trip and three.
A Date That Entitles You to Something
Free Water Saving Toilets for Homes Built Before 1993
The city runs a programme with an eligibility rule that is purely a plumbing fact. If you are a City of Savannah water customer and you own a home built before 1993, the city says you may be able to receive a free water saving toilet, with applications through its Water Connects Us All site under Upgrades.
The 1993 line is not arbitrary. It is the date at which national maximum flush volumes changed, so a toilet original to a house built before it was designed to a different standard than anything sold afterwards. A city offering to replace those fixtures is doing demand management, and a household taking it up is getting a component swap it would otherwise pay for.
It is worth pairing this with the dye test above rather than treating them as separate. If a pre 1993 house has a toilet that fails the dye test, the question is no longer whether to repair a flapper; it is whether the fixture qualifies for replacement at no cost. Establishing the build date is a two minute job and it changes the answer.
Grease, and the Word Fines
What the Water Reclamation Department Says Happens Next
The city fats, oils and grease programme describes the mechanism the way a plumber would. These are common byproducts of cooking and food preparation, and they enter the plumbing system through kitchen sinks, dishwashers and floor drains. Poured down a drain, they stick to the inside of sewer pipes and harden, leading to costly blockages. Once in the sewer system, it cools and solidifies, clings to pipe walls, reduces pipe capacity and restricts flow.
- Raw sewage backups into homes, businesses and streets
- Environmental contamination of waterways
- Costly cleanups and repairs
- Increased utility rates, which lands on everybody rather than the source
- Fines for property owners and businesses responsible for blockages
That last item is the one worth reading twice, and note that it names property owners as well as businesses. Most municipal grease pages are aimed squarely at restaurants. This one puts a household on the same list, which changes a kitchen habit from good citizenship into something with a potential cost attached.
The city also asks for early reporting rather than tidy reporting. If you suspect a blockage, call 311 immediately, and it repeats the instruction for anything you cannot see: even if you do not see it, call 311, which is 912-651-6565, and report it, because sewer spills pollute waterways and the quicker city staff know about it the safer everybody is. Customer Service for billing questions is a different number, 912-651-6460.
Around the City
Where This Applies Across Savannah
The neighbourhoods below are geography rather than a coverage promise. What varies across them for the purposes of this page is age of the housing stock, which decides both the free toilet eligibility above and the likelihood of lead solder inside the walls, and how much mature root mass sits between a lateral and the main.
Our wider Georgia position sits on the state page, and the other Georgia city pages we have published are Atlanta, Marietta and Lawrenceville, all of them above the fall line and on a different water story entirely. None of those pages, and not this one, claims a response time here.
Savannah Plumbing Questions, Answered Straight
A city moving its primary water source with $146 million behind it, a toilet that can double your bill, a dye test with a twenty minute clock, and a grease programme that mentions fines for householders.
From two sources. The city states it is very fortunate to have two outstanding drinking water sources, the Floridan Aquifer and the Savannah River. It also states, in the present tense, that it is moving toward the Savannah River as its primary source. It does not publish a current percentage split between the two on the page we read, so we do not state one here.
That is what its own water supply and treatment page says, and there is funding behind it. The Georgia General Assembly approved a Coastal Georgia Regional Water Partnership in the FY25 midyear budget, with $501.7 million allocated through the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority as state direct investments and zero interest loans. The City of Savannah is to receive $146 million of that, for expansion of the I and D plant, raw water pumping enhancements, transmission pump station upgrades and two new water towers.
The city gives both dates. The $40.5 billion midyear budget containing the allocation passed on March 3, 2025 and was signed into law by the Governor on March 6, 2025. The partnership is described as a collaboration between municipal utility providers including the City of Savannah, Bryan County and Effingham County, and one of its stated purposes is to establish water supply system redundancy across the region.
We do not know, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. No page we read publishes a before and after comparison of hardness, pH or any other water chemistry figure between the aquifer and the river, so any claim in either direction would be invented. What the city does publish is that its water does not contain lead when it leaves the well or treatment plant, and that lead risk comes from corrosion of plumbing materials made with lead. Read your utility notices and check the inventory.
The city publishes a Water Service Line Inventory and invites you to check its records for the water service line at your property. If you cannot find your address in the inventory map, the city asks you to email Savannah Water Resources rather than draw a conclusion from the gap. A missing address is an unknown, not a clean result.
Only for that one component. The inventory covers the buried service line. The city separately lists home plumbing, solder and fixtures alongside buried pipes as places where corrosion of lead containing materials can put lead into water. Older copper plumbing can carry lead solder at the joints and older fittings can contain lead in the brass, and neither shows up in a service line record.
Because consumption genuinely is. The city publishes that each resident uses an average of 85 gallons a day in winter and that this jumps to 125 gallons a day in summer. It also gives a worked example: a typical sprinkler on a standard garden hose uses about 1,020 gallons in an hour, so running it three times a week is about 12,240 gallons a month. A summer increase is not automatically a fault.
The city calls a leaking or continuously running toilet one of the most common household leaks, and states that a continuously running toilet can waste up to 200 gallons a day and can double a family typical water use and bill. A leaky faucet, by comparison, may waste as much as 20 gallons a day. If the season does not explain the bill, test the toilets first because the potential waste is an order of magnitude larger.
Use the city dye test. Take the lid off the tank behind the bowl, flush the toilet, then wait for it to fully refill. Put a few drops of dye or a coloured dye tablet in the tank. Wait at least 20 minutes, or longer if you suspect a small leak. If there is any colour in the toilet bowl, there is a leak. The city names a deteriorated or defective flush valve flapper ball that is not sealing as the most common cause.
Check the fill valve. The city names an improperly adjusted or broken fill valve, the ballcock, as the second most common type of toilet leak. To check for it, take the lid off the toilet tank, flush, and see whether water is draining into the overflow tubes when the tank is full. That fault wastes water without ever passing through the flapper, so a dye test will not catch it.
Possibly, and the eligibility rule is a plumbing one. The city asks two questions: are you a City of Savannah water customer, and do you own a home built before 1993. If both are true it invites you to learn about receiving a free water saving toilet, with applications through its Water Connects Us All site under the Upgrades section. It is worth establishing the build date before paying to repair an original fixture.
Because of what it does inside the pipe. The city states that fats, oils and grease enter the plumbing system through kitchen sinks, dishwashers and floor drains, stick to the inside of sewer pipes and harden, and once in the sewer system cool and solidify, cling to pipe walls, reduce pipe capacity and restrict flow. The listed consequences run from raw sewage backups into homes, businesses and streets through to increased utility rates.
The city lists fines as one of the consequences, and it names property owners as well as businesses responsible for blockages. Most municipal grease programmes are written at restaurants; this one is not. We are not going to state what any fine is, because no amount is published on the page we read, but the existence of the category is worth knowing about.
The city says to call 311 immediately, and repeats the instruction for things you cannot see: even if you do not see it, call 311, which is 912-651-6565, and report it, because sewer spills pollute the environment and waterways and the quicker city staff know the safer everybody is. For an unusually high bill you cannot explain, the Customer Service team is a separate number, 912-651-6460, or there is an online contact form.
The city flags irrigation as a common source of high water use and says watering times generally double in summer compared with winter. It advises checking automated systems regularly for leaks and broken sprinkler heads, warns that a sprinkler valve stuck on could waste an extremely large quantity of water, and notes that timers are frequently programmed to water for too long and too often. All three are checks rather than repairs.
Check What You Can Check
Savannah Plumber Work That Starts With Free Information
Three things on this page cost nothing and all three change what a job looks like. Look your address up on the water service line inventory. Run the twenty minute dye test on every toilet in the house. Find out whether the house was built before 1993, because that decides whether a failing fixture is a repair or a free replacement. Do those before anybody quotes and the conversation afterwards is a much shorter one.
Related work on this site: leak detection covers the leaks the dye test cannot reach, fixture repair covers the flapper and fill valve work above, and our Atlanta plumbing page covers the other end of the state. The state picture sits on our Georgia plumbing page.
Sources for the two drinking water sources, the Floridan Aquifer and the Savannah River, and for the statement that the city is moving toward the Savannah River as its primary source: the City of Savannah Water Supply and Treatment page.
Sources for the Coastal Georgia Regional Water Partnership, the participation of Bryan County and Effingham County, the $501.7 million allocation, the distribution through the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority as state direct investments and zero interest loans, the $40.5 billion FY25 midyear budget, the March 3, 2025 passage and March 6, 2025 signing, the $146 million share for the City of Savannah, the I and D plant expansion, raw water pumping system enhancements, water transmission pump station upgrades and two new water towers, and the stated aim of system redundancy: the city State Water Supply Partnership page.
Sources for the statement that Savannah drinking water meets all USEPA and Georgia EPD standards, that it does not contain lead when it leaves the well or treatment plant, that the risk for lead to enter water comes from corrosion of plumbing materials made with lead including pipes buried in the ground, home plumbing, solder and fixtures, and for the Water Service Line Inventory lookup and the instruction to email Water Resources if an address cannot be found: the city Water Service Line Inventory page.
Sources for the 85 gallons per resident per day in winter and 125 in summer, the 1,020 gallons per hour sprinkler example and the 12,240 gallons per month extrapolation, the statement that a continuously running toilet can waste up to 200 gallons a day and can double a family typical water use and bill, the flush valve flapper and fill ballcock valve descriptions, the full dye test including the instruction to wait at least 20 minutes, the leaky faucet figure of as much as 20 gallons per day, the irrigation warnings about stuck valves and misprogrammed timers, and the Customer Service telephone number: the city High Water Bill Common Causes page.
Sources for the free water saving toilet programme and its two eligibility questions, being a City of Savannah water customer and owning a home built before 1993, and for the application route through the Water Connects Us All site under Upgrades: the city Water Saving Toilets page. Sources for the fats, oils and grease description, the kitchen sink, dishwasher and floor drain entry routes, the cooling, solidifying, clinging, capacity and flow effects, the full consequence list including fines for property owners and businesses responsible for blockages, and the 311 reporting instruction with its telephone number: the city Fats, Oils and Grease page.
WE REFUSE ANY BEFORE AND AFTER WATER CHEMISTRY COMPARISON BETWEEN THE AQUIFER AND THE RIVER. No hardness, pH, alkalinity or corrosivity figure for either source is stated anywhere on this page, because no fetched source publishes one, and the body text says so rather than implying an answer. The observation that a source transition is a reason to read utility notices and check the service line inventory is OURS, drawn from two separate published city statements, and it is labelled as ours.
No water or sewer rate is quoted anywhere on this page, because the billing and rates pages were not opened. No permit or utility connection fee is quoted. No current percentage split between the two water sources is stated. No completion date for the I and D plant expansion is stated, because none appears on the page read. No count of lead or galvanized service lines, no mileage of water or sewer main, no lift station count, no treatment capacity and no population served is stated. No fine amount is stated for a grease blockage, because none is published.
No response time, crew count, office or address of ours is stated for Savannah, and no coverage claim is made beyond what our Georgia page already sets out. Programmes, figures, telephone numbers and funding schedules change, so confirm current details with the City of Savannah before relying on anything above.