Belmont residents with dry wells could start seeing water lines installed in their community in the next two months.

Gainesville’s Public Utilities Department has chosen a contractor to install water lines in areas of the community — Belmont Highway, Talmo Road, Mabery Road and McEver Lake Road — that have gone without water or dealt with poor well water for the last few years.

Gainesville Public Utilities Engineer Jason Perry said crews likely will begin installing the lines before Thanksgiving. Work could take approximately 240 days to complete.

The news was good for residents of the area who have signed petitions for water service for years.

"They’re all anxious to get water down there," Perry said. "They’re in bad shape down there."

Months ago, city and county officials said the obstacle that stood between the Belmont residents and immediate connection to the nearest Gainesville water line was money. Cost estimates for 3.33 miles of water lines is about $1.3 million, or $65,000 per customer the line would serve, according to Gainesville’s Public Utilities Director Kelly Randall.

Today, a cost estimate the lowest bidder, Po Boys Plumbing, Inc., offered for the work was less than $786,000.

Originally, the Gainesville utility planned to expand its water lines to areas of the Belmont community by 2012, based on a first-come, first-served priority list of planned water extensions.

On June 11, Hall County Commissioners Bobby Banks and Tom Oliver made an emphatic motion to get water service to residents on Belmont Highway, Talmo Road, Mabery Road and McEver Lake Road as soon as revenues from the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax would allow.

The motion, approved unanimously by the four members present at the meeting, called for the county to pay for the water lines with the sales tax revenue and be reimbursed by Gainesville’s Public Utilities Department in 2012, the year the city department originally planned to extend water service to Belmont.

But Randall said the motion was a violation of a three-year-old agreement between the city municipality and the county.

In January 2006, the governments agreed that Gainesville would provide water service to residents and businesses of unincorporated Hall County on a first-come, first-served basis. If the county needed the city utility to extend a water line earlier than Gainesville’s planned construction schedule, it could ask for it, as long as the county paid for it.

"Water main extensions requested by Hall County to be constructed ahead of schedule may be designed and constructed by Gainesville and the cost thereof paid for by Hall County," the agreement reads.

Once those lines are built, Hall County would give them to the city utility to maintain and collect revenue, according to the agreement. The agreement is signed by the Gainesville City Council and the 2006 county commission, including Oliver, Billy Powell and Steve Gailey who all voted on June 11 without mention of the three-year-old agreement.

In June, Oliver said he planned to keep that promise even if it means breaking the 2006 agreement and asking Jackson County to extend its water lines to Belmont.

But on Thursday, Perry said Hall County had agreed to fund the project. The city would cover the difference of the cost associated with purchasing 12-inch water lines instead of 8-inch lines, Perry said.

"After much ado about nothing, we’re doing what we promised to do in our plan," Figueras said.